World on Fire
by Kayasuri-n
Summary: Ever since Giovanni died, Team Rocket has been nothing more then a rather large gang. The only thing any of them can decide on is this: Detective Brenda Johnson and Mewtwo have to die. Rated M for language, violence, and murder. COMPLETE
1. Kindling

**Wednesday**

Brenda was _pissed_.

It was five minutes to the end of her shift. She'd been working on paper work all day. She hadn't been able to shove any of it at Mewtwo, because word had spread that he was good with electronics. Some fucking bastard over in Vice had _stolen_ him to fix their computers.

She made a mental note to reword that complaint once they got home. Mewtwo was fucking touchy about anything that might imply that she 'owned him'. Idiot.

And now, five minutes to the end of her shift, she was at a crime scene. Couldn't the Captain have waited five minutes? Some other Homicide detective would've gotten the case then.

"What do you see, Smith?" Brenda asked, taking in the sights. The inside of the Tim Hortons was barely controlled chaos. Somebody dies, and civilians freak out. That was the way of the world.

Mewtwo turned his head the slightest bit, scanning the room. Brenda studied his illusion, noted the flicker- when he looked at the body- and nodded. He was getting better at that. She hadn't had to remind him.

"There are five officers here already, sir," he said, and frowned. "Why did they call us in?"

"Did you note where they're from?" Brenda asked. She grinned when he shook his head. "Well, good, neither did I, but it's a safe bet that the uniforms are on traffic and Mr. Plainclothes over there is not homicide."

Mewtwo arched one eyebrow, a silent request for information. Brenda decided she was feeling generous. "Two marked patrol vehicles in the lot. One unmarked, beige Crown Vic in the lot. And if Mr. Plainclothes was on Homicide, we wouldn't be here."

Mewtwo winced. Or rather, his illusion winced. "I missed that."

"It's been a long day," Brenda agreed. "What else do you see?"

"There are only six civilians," Mewtwo said. He shot a glance in her direction, but Brenda waved it off. It was a good exercise for him, and maybe he'd see what she saw. "Four- six employees. Why are two of them out from behind the counter?"

"Anything else about those two employees?" Brenda murmured. She watched as Mewtwo looked at them again, saw his eyes widen as he figured it out.

"Ah. Which one, do you think?"

"The girl. Has to be. Where are the EMTs?"

As if on cue, the door behind them swung open. Brenda turned, and grinned at the two EMTs entering the building.

"Wondered where you were," she said. "Wait for Crime Scene, please, but would one of you take a round of the civilians? A few of them look like they could use the attention."

Then, she took a few steps further into the room, Mewtwo shadowing her. She raised two fingers to her mouth and whistled, loud.

"Alright! The four officers will take your statements, and then anyone who doesn't work here can scram! If you need to see a doctor, there are two EMTs here for that purpose. The four of you behind the counter, close the place up, call your boss if you haven't done so already. Then be good little lackeys and don't talk to each other. Get it? Good."

"Well done, Detective. I take it we get those two?" Mewtwo nodded at the two employees seated at one of the tables.

"No shit."

Both employees looked up when Brenda and Mewtwo approached. One was a girl, maybe fifteen if Brenda was any judge. The guy looked twenty, twenty-one, and had tears dripping down his face. He didn't seem to notice.

"Hey," Brenda said, and leaned up against the nearest table. It was empty, not that she would have cared. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"

The girl paled, if that was possible. She'd already looked pretty close to Mewtwo's natural fur color, if one discounted his tail.

"Uh, we, that is," she mumbled.

"He's dead," the guy burst out.

"Okay, stop. How about we start with something simple, yeah?" Brenda pointed at the girl. "Name?"

"L-Linda. Linda Petker."

"Great. You?"

"Bill. William. Uh, Dennis."

"Do you have three first names or what?"

The guy blushed. "Sorry. William Dennis, but everyone calls me Bill."

Brenda nodded. The guy was calmer, now, and probably wouldn't start sobbing again. "Alright, Bill, Linda. Do either of you two know the victim?"

Bill screwed up his face, like he was trying not to cry. Linda ducked her chin and hunched her shoulders.

"Yeah," Bill said. "He was a friend of mine. We were in school together. Taking the course for EMT. And Linda- she's his girl."

"Was," Linda mumbled. "We broke up."

Brenda arched one eyebrow, and shared a look with Mewtwo. "Okay, so what happened?"

"Alan, he came in. He wanted the soup. Chicken noodle. I served him the soup," Linda said. "He went over to the table, sat down, started eating, and then… He started jerking all over the place."

"Seizure. He hit his head on the- on the wall." Bill pointed at the 'wall', which was only hip high. There was a smear of blood on one edge. "Then he went down on the ground, hard. I was on drive through. I only noticed when someone started screaming. Then I ran over to help." His eyes widened, and he looked up at Brenda. "That was right, wasn't it? I mean, he was having a seizure!"

"What did you do to help?" Brenda asked.

"Well, I kind of sat on him. Because he was thrashing. But I didn't really sit on him, just held his legs down with one of mine, held his wrists. And I tried to hold his hand." Bill held up his hands. They were big. "I could hold both his wrists in one hand. We always- well, we used to joke… He's such a… I mean he was…"

"Okay, breathe. Calm down. You can't help him if you're incoherent," Mewtwo said. "Now, what were you saying?"

"We always used to joke that he was such a shrimp, because he was so skinny, you know? So I could hold him down, easy. Only when I touched his forehead, he stopped. I checked his pulse, his breathing, but there wasn't anything. I started CPR. I know I did everything right, but he just wouldn't wake up!"

Brenda nodded. "Okay. Thanks. You did everything right. Why don't you go sit down over… Uh, do you have a break room?" Brenda asked, turning to Linda.

"Yeah, we do. Bill, go sit in the break room. Or- can he call his girlfriend, to come and pick him up?"

"Sure," Brenda said. "Bill, leave your contact information with one of the officers, then call your girl. Go home. Let me take care of Alan now, okay?"

The guy nodded, looking miserable. He stood up, and slouched towards one of the officers.

Brenda looked back at Linda. "So why don't you tell me why you served your ex-boyfriend."

"I- he was a customer. I had to."

"You couldn't get someone else to take him? I'm pretty sure your co-workers would've understood. He's your ex, after all. Nasty breakup?" Brenda's voice was light.

Linda shook her head, quickly. She wouldn't meet Brenda's eyes. "N-no. Nothing like that. It was calm. Mutual. And everyone was busy. I had to help him."

"Did he always come in on Wednesday for chicken noodle soup?" Brenda asked. "Always here?"

"Yes, but that doesn't- he just did. He never thought about it. I'm sure he didn't."

"So, after a breakup, he wasn't going to think about going to his ex's workplace?"

Linda bit her lip and didn't reply.

Brenda shifted, until she was leaning forward. "Whose ring is that?" she asked.

"What?"

"Left hand, ring finger. Whose ring is that?"

Linda stared at her hand as if she'd never seen it before. "I- I- Alan's."

"You break up with someone, but don't give back his class ring? Cold."

"I was going to!" Linda's eyes were wide and terrified. "I swear I was going to!"

"He was here," Brenda pointed out. "Right here. You could've handed it over. Why didn't you?"

Linda just shook her head, and closed her eyes.

"What did you put in the soup?"

_That_ got a reaction. Linda _snarled_, her hands curled into claws. "You can't prove anything! You're just reaching- you need someone to blame and you're going to blame me! Well I didn't do it!"

"Cameras," Brenda said, pointing up at the ceiling. Linda's gaze followed, and she winced. "We're going to review the tapes, we're going to see you put something in his soup. Don't know what, yet, but the lab reports are going to come back as his bowl being poisoned, and nothing else. You handled his soup, Linda. There were several other bowls of chicken soup, and no one else was dead."

The girl was crying. "He was mean! He made me look like a fool! He was sleeping around with _Ashley_ the whole time we were dating! Then, right after we had sex the first time, he breaks up with me!" She pulled the ring off her finger and threw it across the room. "I hate him! I'm glad he's dead!"

Brenda stood up. "Linda Petker, you're under arrest for the murder of…" she paused, and glanced over at Mewtwo.

"Alan Cornell."

"Right. For the murder of Alan Cornell." Brenda pulled out the handcuffs, and snapped them on Linda's wrists. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you."

Once the messy business was taken care of, Brenda passed the girl over to the cop in plainclothes. She frowned as the Crown Vic pulled out of the parking lot, and rolled her shoulders.

"I hate cases like this," she muttered.

Mewtwo, damn his pokemon hearing, nodded. _(They're senseless.)_

"Whatever." Brenda moved over to the counter. "Hey, you!" She pointed at one of the employees. "I'll take a large coffee, black, to go."

**Wednesday**

The moment Brenda started driving, Mewtwo dropped his illusion. She glanced over, and scowled.

_(If you're not careful, your face will freeze like that.)_

"Hasn't happened yet. Are you sitting on your tail?"

_(No, Detective.)_ Mewtwo's mental voice gave the impression of a sigh. _(Why do you ask?)_

"Because you look uncomfortable." Brenda muttered a curse and stomped on her breaks. "Hey! You! Fucking watch where you're driving!" She shook her fist at the sports car that had just cut her off, before looking at Mewtwo again. "You don't normally look like you're getting skinned alive. What gives?"

_(You sent the car in for __maintenance__, didn't you?)_

"Ye-ah… Last week. I thought vegetables were good for your memory?"

Mewtwo frowned at her. _(Whoever worked on the car moved the passenger seat up, and it won't move back. Until we get out, I won't be able to fix it.)_

"Did you try kicking it?"

_(While I'm sitting in it? Detective, I'm sorry, my legs don't bend that way.)_

Brenda leaned over. "No, I guess they don't. Do you want me to stop at the next gas station? Fix it there?"

_(I'd really like you to watch the road, actually…)_

"I need to teach you how to drive."

_(Shouldn't we go in and do the paperwork?)_

Brenda made an aggrieved sound, and switched lanes. "You just have to be responsible, don't you?"

_(It's a gift.)_

Her answer was all of one finger. The driver of the sedan next to her saw it, thought it was a gesture for him, and started edging into her lane.

Mewtwo sighed. He hated driving.

**Wednesday**

"We're gone," Brenda said. Mewtwo looked up from his computer, and nodded.

"We do get overtime for the paperwork, right?"

"Smith… Remember what I told you about your optimism?"

Mewtwo stood up and stretched, his fingertips brushing the ceiling. "You've never said anything about it, actually."

"Oh." Brenda blinked, and kicked at his ankle. He moved out of the way, and lifted one eyebrow.

"Were you going to say anything about my optimism?" Optimism. Him. That was a first.

"Only that it's pointless and stupid, but I think you can figure that out."

A smirk was her only answer. Not, he supposed, that Brenda minded.

"Are you still going to teach me to drive 'the proper way'?" he asked, once they were waiting for the elevator.

"I'm going to teach you to drive, period. I'm tired of chauffeuring you around."

Mewtwo looked up at the security camera, and shook his head slightly. Someone had expected a very bad fake to pass muster. Probably the result of a rather poor budget.

"Come on, let's go. Don't forget to take a whack at the seat."

_(Of course I'll remember, Detective, my feet still hurt.)_

"God damn it, I told you about that!"

**Wednesday**

_(Maintenance did a poor job,)_ Mewtwo said. He looked out the window. He'd never noticed that house on the corner, there. The garden was rather pretty; summer flowers were just beginning to bloom, and there was a lovely Japanese maple right by the sidewalk.

"I'm going to _kill_ them!"

He looked over because of the lack of swearing. If she didn't swear, then she was serious.

_(Could you kill them _after_ you make them fix the car?)_

"Maybe," Brenda granted, before slamming her fist down on the dashboard. "Those self-serving mother-fucking bastards! How the fucking hell am I supposed to do my job with this pile of crap, huh?"

Mewtwo shrugged, and fumbled with his seat belt. _(You can ask them tomorrow,)_ he said. _(Get out. It will be easier to teleport this thing to your driveway if you're not in it.)_

Brenda growled, but got out. "Why, may I ask, is it easier? You've teleported me before."

_(Detective, it's a car. The bigger and heavier an object is, the harder it is to teleport.)_

He interpreted her look as one of disbelief and suspicion. _(No, really, it is. It doesn't help that your mental shields are nasty ones, either.)_

"You just want to go for a walk, don't you?"

_(And I'd enjoy your company very much, yes.)_

"Have I mentioned you're a freak lately?" Brenda asked, shoving her hands into her pockets. The car disappearing in a rush of blue light- it wasn't difficult at all, never mind what he'd said- didn't seem to faze her. "Because, you know, you are."

_(You said I was 'fucking weird' this morning, does that count? Now come on, it's only three blocks.)_

"I could be home, playing with Rhonwen. Instead, some psychotic psychic decides to drag me around the neighborhood." Brenda shook her head and grinned. Mewtwo grinned back.

_(Would you be in a better mood if I promise to fix the car?)_

"You know, I think I feel better. Less like killing someone and more like maiming. Maiming is more fun anyways."

_(That's what I thought.)_

Later, he would say that he should have seen it coming. Brenda would counter with the fact that _she_ had more experience, if anyone should have predicted it, it should have been her.

As it was, both of them were caught by surprise when a boy jumped out from behind a rather large oak tree, waved a knife in their direction, and charged.

Mewtwo and Brenda glanced at each other, and then back at the boy.

Brenda stepped forward, kicked at his stomach, and followed through with a punch to the head.

Mewtwo waved one hand and telepathically made sure the boy would stay out for several hours.

Brenda rested her hands on her hips, and looked back up at Mewtwo. "Well," she said. "That's new."

**End Notes**

Hello, loyal readers! Welcome back to the latest segment of the Sword and Shield Universe! I'd like to get a few things out of the way before we begin the ride, okay? Great!

First off, I have a co-author for this story. She's my beta reader, and you already know her as the voice of Sheryl, Brenda's adopted mother. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you CalliopeMused! We've, ah, relocated one of her characters from The Fifth (Teen Titans, rather fun, take a peek) to the Sword 'verse. I'll let you know her when you see her, but for right now, Call owns her character.

Anyways, due to the co-written status of this story, some updates might be a bit slower then others. Call is a college student, which means lots of school work. So, since school comes first, it... well, it comes first.

Well, that's it for my blather. Enjoy the story, let me know what you think, have a good day... all that jazz. I don't own pokemon, I'm just playing with 'em.


	2. Meetings

Yes, I realize this is a rather quick update. Lucky you- this chapter was already written. Third chapter is in the works, will hopefully be finished before Hell freezes over.

Disclaimer: Are you kidding me? I don't own pokemon. I also don't own Davis- she's CalliopeMused's creation.

**Wednesday**

Brenda stalked into the bull pen, snarling. She spotted the cop almost at once. Black hair, dusky skin, no uniform; dark blue slacks and a cream colored blouse, no jacket. Weapon at the hip. No one from Viridian that Brenda recognized, had to be from out of town. Whoever it was, they were leaning on her desk. "Hey!"

"Officer Johnson? Lieutenant Davis, from Pallet Town. You're my consult for area gang activity." She flashed her badge.

Brenda walked over and bared her teeth at the badge. "Consult for what?" The badge looked real. Closer up, she was able to see pale scars on the arms and hands. The scars looked like they'd been gotten in more then one fight.

"Rocket. Reports say you were involved in taking Giovanni out, but the rest of the organization is still moving." Lieutenant Davis straightened, using every inch of height she had. "I've been assigned to meet with you at least once per week to discuss strategies and progress in how to dismantle Team Rocket."

Mewtwo stepped up behind Brenda, risking an elbow to the stomach. He was taller then this lieutenant, and looked down his illusionary nose at her. "We are homicide cops," he said. "Gangs aren't in our purview, unless they kill someone."

"We have an inter-station agreement," the lieutenant explained. "You have experience with Rocket, I work with getting gangs out of cities. Call it homicide prevention if it'll make the assignment fit in your box."

"That's Anti-Crime," Brenda pointed out. "Or Vice. As for our experience? Giovanni did something fucking stupid. We stopped him. That's it." Punching another cop would be bad, she reminded herself.

"That's not my lookout, is it? I'm assigned to work with you. I don't care if you sit in the conference room for an hour and bring coloring books, that's the assignment."

Yeah, punching another cop would be bad, but it was tempting. Brenda cracked her knuckles. "You're talking about an hour taken out of our work. While we could be out conducting interviews or looking over a murder scene, you want us in a conference room with our thumbs up our asses."

Mewtwo blinked, and looked down at Brenda. "Detective..."

"No. I want one hour per week. I show you strategies that work in my home district, you tell me what Rocket has its claws into here. Research, training, scattering agents through caves, whatever else they're doing. If you can't do that, then you're welcome to show up with nothing but thumbs to amuse yourselves," the lieutenant said, without raising her voice.

"How the fucking hell are we supposed to know what those assholes are up to, huh? Murder cops, not psychics!"

Mewtwo bit his tongue, and risked a hand on Brenda's shoulder. She elbowed him in the stomach.

"Crime reports." The lieutenant looked calm. "I'm sure you have some idea what Giovanni's prime interests were. From there, you can trace how Rocket is involved in your town and the surrounding area. Once you know that, you can get Rocket out."

"Detective, I can take care of that along with my other duties." Mewtwo tilted his head, considering the two female cops. "It won't take me that long, considering my computer skills."

"Vahan, shut the fuck up, now."

"Officer Smith, I would be much obliged," the lieutenant said. "Just one hour a week. I can take care of work at my house, the hour can be useful. I don't know why someone came up with the arrangement, I don't care that you're homicide cops. You're stuck with me until your boss discontinues the arrangement."

"So, when demons are ice skating down in hell. Great. You're leaning on my desk."

"The other option was your chair." The lieutenant straightened. "Would either of you like to suggest a day?"

"Thursdays," Mewtwo said, before Brenda could speak. "At four?"

"That will work," she said. "Until Thursday, then."

Brenda rounded on Mewtwo, and snarled. "That doesn't work, you- mmph!"

"If you bite me, you won't like what happens next," Mewtwo told her.

"Look," the lieutenant said, "I'm no happier with this, but it's part of your job. Tomorrow at four," she repeated, nodding stiffly to Smith before walking towards the garage.

Brenda rolled her eyes, the better to keep an eye on the uppity new cop, before looking back at Mewtwo. She didn't _think_ she'd given him warning, but when she went to kick him, his leg wasn't there.

"Now, Detective, that wasn't very nice," he said.

Brenda made a feral sound deep in her throat.

Mewtwo's illusion arched its eyebrows, and he took his hand off her face. She shook her head, and sat down at her desk. "Never, ever do that again," she said.

"Of course not, Detective. Should I get started on the, ah, research for tomorrow's meeting?"

"Screw that," Brenda said. "We're off duty." She eyed her desk, and sighed. Paperwork. She hated paperwork. "On second thought, I'll file the damn reports, you do research- but the moment I'm done we're gone."

Mewtwo nodded and sat down at his desk. Brenda eyed him a moment, and grinned. She knew him; his illusion might be sitting in the chair properly, but she'd bet good money that he was really perched on the edge of the seat, in order to make room for his tail.

She snorted, and turned back to her desk. Paperwork, she reminded herself. Some schmuck of a drugged up kid attacking her on her way home, her partner just so happened to be in the area…

A sudden thought had her looking up and over at the other cops in the bull pen. All of them, every single damn one of them, looked busy.

She wondered what changes to the betting pool would be made after tonight.

Half an hour later, she shoved away from her desk. "Smith! You're off the clock."

Mewtwo looked up and nodded. "I only need a moment, Detective." He waved something small, sleek, and black at her, before plugging the whatever it was into his computer tower. Brenda shrugged and stood up.

"What is that?" she asked, moving to lean over his shoulder.

"A memory stick. Like a portable hard drive."

"Hard drive? That's the memory, right?"

A sigh. "Yes, Detective, a hard drive is a computer's memory."

Brenda smiled, and moved backwards, giving Mewtwo enough room to stand up and stretch. That tail of his was practically a lethal weapon.

"So," she said. "How much did you get?"

"So far, everything is legal," he answered. Brenda nearly walked into an empty desk.

"You're not using my computer to hack into sealed files," she growled, her words nearly incomprehensible.

Mewtwo glanced back at her, and grinned. It was, Brenda thought, a decidedly creepy expression. Way too much cheer for one person at- shit, eight-o-five at night. _(Detective, what you don't know can't hurt you. Just be sure to get a good night's rest.)_

Brenda clenched her teeth and refrained from punching him in the face. She didn't need a partner with a concussion. But goddamnit, she'd _told_ him about telepathy in the station!

"Relax, Detective." Mewtwo paused before the elevator. "Straight home?"

"I want to talk to the bastards," Brenda said, and punched the button for the elevator doors. "That'd be third floor, Requisitions."

Mewtwo winced, and leaned up against the wall. "How many will you maim?" he asked.

"Who said I want to maim them? They've fucked me over for the last time, the bastards."

"Because murder means paperwork, Detective. Do you really want to fill out any more forms?"

"I'll make you do them."

Mewtwo rolled his eyes. "I feel so honored."

"Oh, shut up."

The ride in the elevator up to the third floor was quiet. Brenda grinned, and practically bolted once the doors opened.

"Hey, fuckup!" She pointed at the only cop in the room, seated in a desk in front of a closed door. Behind that door, she knew, a bunch of sadistic bastards worked to screw over every working cop by denying them the equipment they needed.

She really didn't like Requisitions, almost as much as she didn't like Maintenance.

The cop looked up, and scowled. He had the dark hair and dark skin of an islander, but his features were of a Shamouti native, without discernible cheekbones and rounded eyes. Brenda personally found such rounded features somewhat childish, making the person look like they were stuck with their baby fat.

"Yes?" he asked. "What do you want?"

"Alright, shit-for-brains, I need a new car." Brenda braced her hands on the desk.

"Fill out a form, then. And watch your language."

Brenda rolled her eyes. "No, you idiot, I don't think you get it. I need a car now." No way in hell was she having Mewtwo teleport her back home. Teleporting her and their attacker to the station had been risky enough. Why take any more chances? "Mine broke down."

"So send it to Maintenance and take a taxi, like other cops."

She looked down at the desk, and grinned at the little nameplate. _Jordan Brooks_ had no idea who he was trying to fuck with.

"That's not going to work," she said, and grinned. "My car, you see, is a piece of crap. I've sent it to Maintenance, it broke after they supposedly fixed it. It was a piece of crap when I got it, it's an even worse piece of crap now. I'm sick and tired of getting shit from you guys. Now, you can either fix this problem, get me a new car that won't die within a month, or I can remove your spine. Whichever."

"Fill out a form," Brooks snapped. He shoved several pieces of paper at Brenda's face, which she took automatically. "And then get in line. Do you think its easy supplying everyone with what they need? Cars cost money, ma'am, and we don't have a lot in the budget!"

"That's _sir_ to you," Brenda snarled, and turned away. It seemed Mewtwo would be teleporting her home after all.

**Thursday**

_(Detective?)_ Mewtwo stood in the kitchen doorway, trying to decide just what was wrong.

Brenda was seated at the table, sipping from a coffee mug, eating toast. There was nothing inimical about that, except- the toast wasn't burnt. The coffee smelled like actual coffee, and not the usual mess Brenda normally made in the mornings. Brenda herself didn't look like she wanted to rip limbs from their rightful bodies.

Considering the person, she was downright chipper.

That was wrong.

"We're going bed shopping," she said, and looked up. "Did you fix the car?"

Bed shopping? 'We'? Mewtwo shook his head, unable to quite wrap his mind around the sentence.

"You didn't? Well, fix it. We kind of need the car, you can't teleport me around the city all day."

_(Ah, the car is fixed, Detective- bed shopping?)_ He stared at her, hoping he didn't look nearly as confused as he felt.

"You can't sleep on my couch forever," Brenda pointed out. "I might need it sometime. I told you before, you get the master bedroom and bath. The two rooms are finally cleaned up and it's time to get you furniture."

Mewtwo sat down. Only when his tail didn't bump into the chair's back, when, in fact, he noticed he wasn't sitting on a chair at all, did he realize how befuddled he was.

He'd thought a bar stool was a chair. The kitchen table itself was a foot higher, easier for him to sit at without hitting his knees into the edge. He looked from the table to the Detective, who grinned.

"I switched the chairs for stools two weeks ago, and bought a new table then. Was wondering when you were going to notice."

**Thursday**

It was so very tempting to just laugh at him. At first she'd been angry; she'd gone to the expense of getting new furniture and he hadn't blinked. If she replaced the couch, he'd notice! But no, apparently no longer practically breaking his knees on the kitchen table or getting a cramped tail from the chairs wasn't worth noticing!

Did he even know how difficult it had been, getting out of work in the middle of the day to go meet the delivery men? Setting up the new furniture, getting rid of the old, and getting back to work in time so no one noticed she'd been gone?

It'd been fucking impossible! She'd had to make up some story about why she'd been out so long, and she sucked at that shit!

Then she'd seen the humor.

Mewtwo noticed a hell of a lot. He was a pokemon, his senses were better then a human's, that was a given. Better sense of hearing, better sight, better sense of smell, whatever. The three months he'd been her partner, he'd picked up noticing tiny details at a crime scene and, as far as registering them went, was as good as she was, if not better. He still had to work at figuring out what the details meant, but that was why she was the senior partner.

So, this guy who noticed just about everything on the job, couldn't even notice something as simple as a bar stool instead of a chair.

Brenda had started considering getting a new couch, just to see if he really would notice.

_(Something funny, Detective?)_

"Oh, you're talking now? I thought you were stunned stupid."

Mewtwo turned his head to glare at her. _(When, exactly, did you get the new furniture?)_

"Two weeks ago, I told you. When I took that really long lunch?"

Mewtwo's expression turned thoughtful. _(Then? Well, alright, but… Why?)_

Brenda turned the car towards the local furniture depot. Everything from bathrooms to kitchens to home studies. Who really needed a miniature library in their study, anyways? "Hm? Oh, because Rhonwen would've killed the delivery men."

_(No, I mean, why would you get new furniture?)_

There was a parking space right in front of the mall. Brenda pulled into it, beating out the driver of a neon pink mini-van. Neon pink, honestly!

"Because," she answered. "I got tired of seeing you eat standing up because the chair back hurt your tail, or you kept bashing your knees into the table. Come on."

She knew Mewtwo was staring at her, that his eyes were showing purple. She also knew that this was the most fun she'd had in a week.

"The bedrooms are this way," she said. "Come on. King size, I think. Anything smaller and you'll fall off."

_(I most certainly will not.)_

Brenda looked back over her shoulder, and frowned. "What have I told you about that?" she asked. "You know what, never mind, you're now a mute. Would you hurry up?"

_(Detective…)_ Mewtwo had stopped and was staring at a kitchen setup. The prices for the various parts were displayed on one of the counters. _(What you are proposing… I do not believe I could afford that.)_

Brenda folded her arms and grinned. She could just _see_ him stop, think back over that sentence, and boggle at the idea of being able to pay for something. With money.

"Well, I can. Now come on."

She ignored his spluttering, and grabbed Mewtwo's wrist. He was so shocked, she felt fur under her fingers, not his illusionary self. The tips of her fingers also disappeared, but it wasn't something most people would notice. "Vahan," she said, all sweetness and light. A second later she decided that 'sweetness and light' had probably been a bad idea. She was pretty sure she'd seen his tail for a moment there. "Smith," she snapped. "Pull it together!"

Better. The shock disappeared from his eyes, and his illusion stopped blurring. Brenda smiled. "Now, come on. We're going to look at bedrooms, get you some furniture, even if you don't need most of it…"

Mewtwo was reduced to spluttering yet again as Brenda grabbed his wrist and started to pull.


	3. Papers

**Thursday**

Brenda pulled the car door shut, and scowled when it popped right back open. "I hate this thing," she said.

Mewtwo slammed his door closed as well, and winced. _(As do I.)_

"How come your door stayed closed?" Brenda frowned at Mewtwo. "Mine keeps popping open."

_(I cheated.)_ Mewtwo's eyes took on a blue tint, just as Brenda's door closed properly. _(We should head for the station. Our meeting with Lieutenant Davis is in half an hour.)_

Brenda clenched her hands on the steering wheel and growled. "Do you have your shit gathered together?"

Another blue glow, and Mewtwo had a thick folder in his hands. "Okay, what have I told you about teleporting stuff in the car?"

_(And yet you never seem to have a problem with me teleporting the car.)_

"That's because the car's a piece of crap that keeps breaking down. When the choice is between calling for a tow or having you teleport the damn thing… Well, you don't charge. However, teleporting something _into_ the car, that's distracting."

Mewtwo's expression was innocent. Brenda didn't trust it for a second. _(That argument of yours might carry more weight if the car were turned on,)_ he said.

She scowled, and flipped him the middle finger. She also started the car.

**Thursday**

"Okay, Smith, go talk to Davis. I'll be in the field." Brenda grabbed a notepad and pen from her desk, and glared at the potted plant on her desk. Was that a flower bud? Couldn't be, she didn't water the damn thing… Her gaze slid up to Mewtwo, who happened to look a little stunned.

"You're not going?" he asked.

"Uh, no. I've got better things to do, like talk to the idiot who tried to jump us last night. He should be sober now." She paused, and winced. "Well, going through withdrawal, but whatever."

"With all due respect, sir-" Brenda rolled her eyes. When Mewtwo got formal, it meant he was going to say something stupid or annoying. Or both. "-but I believe Lieutenant Davis wants us _both_ at the meeting."

"So fill me in on what I miss later. Go, you'll be late."

Brenda grabbed Mewtwo's shoulder, tugged until he was facing the right direction, and then shoved. With that, she turned and headed for the elevators. She had a cage to visit.

Mewtwo looked over his shoulder, frowned, and sighed. He wasn't surprised, really.

He entered the conference room, folder in hand. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant," he said.

"Good afternoon." Davis tried to be discreet as she rubbed her left shoulder. Maybe she would be lucky for once, and he would do a little of the writing. "What did you bring?" she asked, nodding at the folder. "I have what your captain provided." That very meager stack of reports had told her nothing new.

Mewtwo set the folder on the table. "I brought all my researches from last night, sir. I would have more, but Detective Johnson and I were busy this morning."

Davis stared at the folder, wondering just how hard she had hit the ground the night before. "You would have more? That looks like more than enough to cover today." She crossed her fingers under the scarred conference table, hoping that it wouldn't be an hour of shuffling paperwork from one folder to another. "So, how much would you say you know about Rocket's activity in the area?" 

How much? Rather say, what didn't he know? "I know that they have their main base of operations here. I have my suspicions as to where, precisely, but no solid evidence." He folded his hands. "It is common knowledge, now, that Giovanni was the leader. He was also the Viridian Gym leader."

"Are there any signs of who took over after his death?" she asked. "That's a little past the scope of where I start out with things, but you're much better informed than I anticipated." 

"Ah..." Mewtwo flipped open his file. He remembered the details, of course, but an ordinary human wouldn't. "There are a few reports, sir, that suggest Team Rocket is now being led by several people. Executives, you could say."

"A gang with bureaucracy? Huh, could work to our advantage if they run things like normal executives." She drummed her fingers on the material the captain had provided. "These reports," she said, "are remarkably vague. What do you know about Rocket's main activities in the area? My district only sees the occasional agents in caves hassling kids, a few robberies, reports of stolen pokemon." 

"Ah, well. From what I found last night..." He flipped a few pages, and handed over one of the sheets. "Team Rocket seems to be behind all the drug dealers in the city, several of the prostitution rings. Most likely, sir, they follow the same pattern in other parts of the country." He flipped several other pages, until he found another sheet. "There are also several legal businesses, to launder the money, I suppose."

Davis nodded slowly. "Your boss gave me homicide cops, so you won't have handed the usual vice crimes. This is actually sophisticated, for Rocket. They usually target trainers, but this..." She read through the legal businesses. "Those two might be legitimate, that one has to be fake. That part of town couldn't possibly support a pastry chef, let alone one claiming that caliber." 

"Ah, correct, sir. I checked..." He found the appropriate page. "Here."

"You did all this in a night, officer?" 

"In two and a half hours, sir. Detective Johnson was dropping me off at my apartment when we were attacked by a mugger." Despite himself, he smiled. "She came back to do paperwork and drop the perp off in the cages. I got dragged along for the ride."

"Two and a half... Smith, I couldn't find this in a full week when I was doing research. If you can get a handle on Rocket this well, the investigation might progress to my methods." She had predicted it would take two months to find so much information. "Once you know how far the gang's spread, you can start working at the edges. The smallest, least profitable ventures. You cut off one of those operations, let the big brass trumpet about how talented their forces are, let the gangs snicker that the smallest fry in their organization did a little time in the big house." 

"And that helps us how?" he asked.

"Because the small fry is left all alone in prison, and pretty soon the gang isn't all that glamorous. The parole board in our local jail was set up to take special procedure with gangs. If someone getting out of jail can get a job in a new neighborhood, they have a chance of getting out. That can lure the other small fries out of the gang. If someone's furious that they were abandoned, they might give me a few more names, a few more facts. Once the fringes are gone, the police find a slightly bigger ring--drugs in a school, a prostitute ring holding a private conference in city hall, black market sales. You don't go straight for the executives, you work in from the bottom." 

Mewtwo nodded, filing that away. "Should I be taking notes?" he asked. "The Detective is going to want to know about this. Even if she doesn't want to know, I'll still tell her."

"It'd make me feel all important," she said, a corner of her mouth twitching. "If you want to talk through it, that's just fine. You have a very good memory, dealing with all those papers. I need to keep my notes labeled and color-coded." 

"Ah, the memory is a hazard of my job." Mewtwo risked rolling his eyes. "The Detective is a very good teacher, but very demanding as well."

"I wouldn't mind if we left titles out of it. I have the promotion because I'm useful to the department and look prettier than the rest of the big brass at press conferences, not because I like the extra nonsense." 

"If you like, sir." Mewtwo looked down at his papers. "So, would you like to know just what else I found?"

"Davis," she corrected. Only her boss went by sir, and that bag of bones had been sitting in the captain's office for twenty years too many. "If it's half as good as the other stuff, I'll have to start bringing take-away for this." Two and a half hours, and he had information she couldn't find after days of poking around in official records. 

Mewtwo plucked a piece of paper out of the file, studied it for a moment, and then handed it over without a word. The names and addresses of the Rocket executives had been pathetically easy to find. "If you look at the legal businesses, these names come up every time. Same with some of the illegal businesses as well."

"Where did you get this? If you can copy it in official police channels, keep it between you, me, and your partner for right now. This is... shit, do you and your partner always chop the heads off of these organizations?" 

"We took down Giovanni," he said in answer. "And, to be honest, we work with murderers. The ways of fighting gangs is new to me. We didn't go over it in much detail at the college."

"You took down Giovanni," she repeated, shaking her head. "If you're crooked, you have an incredibly strange way of going about it." He was too crazy to have a little dirt in his wallet. "I work with gangs, and I've never known this much going in. I started nibbling at the edges because I built up my system by word of mouth. In exchange for some sealed testimony, I got people out of gangs, one at a time, and put their important links in jail." 

"Sir- Davis. I am not crooked. Neither is the Detective. However, you might want to look at Captain Dallas, possibly his aide, Peabody. Dallas has impeded several investigations into Team Rocket before." Mewtwo frowned. He'd quickly grown to share Brenda's dislike of Dallas.

"Someone here is dealing with Rocket. Probably more than one somebody, if you can dig up a list like this and every last one of them poses as a businessman." She stared at the list of executives, then back at Smith. "Coming from out of station, I had no idea what to expect. My advice is to keep this information safe, not in the station. Keep one copy in a safe-deposit box, don't tell anyone but your partner what happens in these meetings. Feel free to spread rumors that I'm impossible to work with, anything like that." 

"Perhaps it would be better if someone else was to complain about you, sir. I work with the Detective, who is one of the most impossible women I have ever met." Not that it was an impressive number. "And if the Detective were to complain, you would be more likely to get a fist to the face then any rumors."

"I'll let other people start working for me on that matter, then. Being rude to people in dispatch is the fastest way to get rumors flying. I have one reputation I care about, and that's getting gangs out of districts I work with." 

Mewtwo chuckled. "Would you like some coffee, Davis? It's station sludge, but..."

"It's a police station, what else would there be?" She smiled. "Nothing in the cup but coffee, for me. Mind showing me where things are around this place? I still can pretend to be lost when I want to snoop. You have a pretty bad infestation of cockroaches in the building, cop-shaped ones." 

"Certainly, sir." He gathered up his file, and tucked it under one arm. At some point, he would have to teleport it back to Brenda's home. "If you'll follow me, I'll show you where the coffee machine is."

She picked up the forms Captain Dallas had given her. "On the way there, could you direct me to the nearest shredder?" 

"I take it you don't want those?" he asked.

"If I had a garden, they'd be compost. If I had a kid, then a few scribbles with crayons would improve them immensely." 

"The Detective has a dog," he said. "She likes ripping things apart."

"Would she be interested in this drivel?" 

"The dog? If it shreds, she'll love it."

"Yours. If she enjoys it, then these won't be a complete waste."

"Thank you. Perhaps now the hellhound will stop growling at me." Doubtful, but he could hope.

"It might help if you had a bribe every time you visited," she said. 

He pretended to think. Every time he visited? "That'd be a lot of bribes," he said.

"The occasional bribe might help you out." 

"The hellhound likes things that shred. More specifically, me. I'm hoping I can distract her with this." He waved the rather thin file in the air, before tucking it under his arm as well.

"Ever looked into dog toys? My neighbor says that the 'indestructible' rubber toys can last for about a week of gnawing." 

"It's something I think I should consider." He gestured at the homicide bull pen. "The coffee is this way."

"How many cops do you work with in homicide?" 

"Ah, the Detective mostly, though there are a few other officers." Mewtwo arched one eyebrow. "The Detective doesn't like cockroaches, so they avoid her."

Davis grinned. "Never been fond of cockroaches, but I do like the crunch when they're finally caught underfoot." 

Mewtwo nodded in agreement. "I suppose that must be enjoyable. I've only helped with one cockroach, and it wasn't a crunch so much as a 'splat'."

"It's hard to get things lined up, since they scatter when the lights go on," she said. "When the budget's too tight for someone to come in looking for them, you wait. Wait, drink coffee, and do your job." 

"Yes, sir."

**End Notes**

Hey, it's my favorite reader-people! Hi! Look, chapter! And you all want to review, don't you? Great!

Yes, I had sugar.

Everyone leave something nice for CalliopeMused, okay? She edited and played the part of Davis.


	4. Phone

**Friday**

Brenda glared at the piece of paper taped to the wall. She really needed to tear it down sometime. Soon. Right after she finished dialing the Lance's home number, in fact.

"Pick up," she muttered into the phone. "Don't you dare be out, Leon. It's your day off."

Was it his day off? He could have changed his schedule. He might have given up days off. It wasn't like he had two hyperactive children living with him any more, he could devote time to his work… Nah, Sheryl would kill him. Or at least give him the silent treatment.

Brenda glanced over at the computer, and scowled. Mewtwo was doing more research for 'Davis'. He had a whole week, why was he doing work now?

Fuckwit.

The phone stopped ringing. Brenda turned around, ready to start yelling at an answering machine, when Leon spoke up.

"Lance house. Wha'd'y' want?"

"Leon, it's Brenda."

"Brenda! Long time no talk. You want me to call Sher?"

"Nah." Brenda looked over at the computer again. "I want to talk to you, actually. You're not busy, are you?"

"Nope. Not getting anywhere with this latest ship."

"Another one? You're obsessed."

"They look fine on the mantel."

"Leon. You're making a ship in a freaking bottle. You're a cop. Have a little pride!"

Leon's voice was sly. "You thought it was pretty neat when you were younger."

"I wasn't sure how you got the ship in the bottle. Now I know. Anyways, not what I'm calling about." Brenda frowned as Mewtwo's shoulders stiffened. When he glanced over his shoulder, she was ready. She drew her finger across her throat and glared. He looked back at the computer.

"Okay, what are you calling about?"

"Do you know anything about a Lieutenant Davis? I didn't get her first name."

"A Lieutenant who?"

"Davis, Leon! Lieutenant Davis!"

"Davis, huh?" Brenda heard the sound of a chair squealing. Leon had probably leaned back or something. "Give me a moment, Brenda. I need to think."

"Think quick."

"This isn't a long distance call, Brenda."

"No, but my patience is short."

"Alright, alright. Lieutenant Davis. She's from…?"

"Pallet Town. Said she specializes in gangs."

"Well, sounds like what I know. Pallet blew its own horn when it promoted her, a few years back. You wouldn't remember, you were moving."

"Okay. Anything else?" Mewtwo was obviously listening, while trying not to listen. Brenda looked around for Rhonwen, and scowled. No houndoom to sic on the annoying psychic. Damn it.

"She doesn't talk to reporters, she works with gangs, and she doesn't beat around the bush. That's all I know."

"You have to know something else, Leon. Anything."

"Why are you even asking, Brenda?"

She wondered if she could just hang up now. Probably not, it'd be rude. "Me and my partner were assigned to work on her. Team Rocket's causing a few problems."

"Your partner? Sheryl wouldn't tell me anything about him. Not even a name."

May the Coffee God smile down on Sheryl, then. "He's Vahan, Officer Smith. He's been my partner for the last three months, he's psychic, and I haven't killed him yet." There was no way Brenda was going to sing Mewtwo's praises anywhere he could hear them. Not that there was much to say, really, he only read all the technical reports and repaired every damn thing.

"So he's something special, then. Psychic _and_ still alive."

"And out of the Tower, yeah. And it's going to stay that way, even if I have to gut everyone in IAB." Okay, maybe a little bit more possessive then she'd meant to be.

"Haven't you ever heard about catching flies with honey, Bren? All you do with vinegar is drown them. Leon, you better not take care of your hobby when I'm not home. The klutziest burglar in the world could steal the glasses off your nose while you're at those ships."

"Hi Sheryl," Brenda said, amused. "Leon has this thing on speaker phone then?"

"There's no other way he can work on the ship. Trireme, this time." Brenda heard wood scraping against wood. Sheryl had probably pulled over a chair. "What's this about your partner? Anything new?"

"There's a new lunatic in the station," Brenda said.

"Lieutenant Davis," Leon said. "Brenda called to complain."

"What kind of lunatic?"

"The psychotic kind, what else? Sheryl, she's got M- Smith researching Team Rocket!" Brenda huffed, and glared at her partner. "Meetings every Thursday- I have dead people I could be taking care of!"

"Why did she ask Vahan to research Team Rocket?" Sheryl asked.

"Well, technically, she asked us. But I suck with computers."

"Why is she asking cops in homicide about a gang? I thought that was usually Vice."

"Apparently, but Dallas assigned me and Smith to help her. He's looking up stuff, and it's Friday! That means there's six more days! Why the fucking _hell_ would he do work like that?"

"He's not a procrastinator?" Leon asked.

"Perhaps he would like to get this out of the way early," Sheryl said. "You will be meeting with her on Thursdays, you said?"

"Smith will. I'll... browbeat a suspect, I don't know."

"Dallas assigned both you and Vahan. You don't feel like you could contribute something for the Thursday meetings?" Sheryl asked.

"Swearing?" Brenda asked, as innocently as possible. In the background, Mewtwo choked.

Sheryl laughed. "Brenda, the woman can't be that bad. She's from another department, I take it? It's a sign of respect to stick you in weekly meetings for a consult, however odd it seems to you."

"She's from Pallet," Leon informed his wife. "And from everything Brenda's said, she doesn't think it's a sign of respect."

"If they wanted to show respect," Brenda said, "they would promote me or something. Or get me a new car. The new car would be great."

"Brenda, do you want to be promoted? That means more paperwork, and even more weekly consultations to deal with special problems. You'll end up doing what Davis is, because that comes with promotions."

"Fucking hell no. The new car'll do. Mine's a piece of shit. It broke again."

"You could ask Crack to take a look at it. He's no mechanic, but he knows how to get cars started up again," she said. "It doesn't sound like the meetings are taking that much time, Brenda. How long was Davis there yesterday?"

"Fuck if I know... Vahan! How long was Davis in the station?"

Mewtwo glanced over his shoulders. "Two hours."

Brenda nodded. "Two hours, Sheryl. Glad I missed that!"

"If you don't want to meet with Davis, then use the two hours to finish up investigations. Final reports, calling witnesses, that sort of thing. It sounds like Vahan can manage on his own with Davis."

"That's what I did," Brenda pointed out. Why couldn't Sheryl grasp that simple concept?

"Right, Brenda, and tell us another one." Leon, apparently, couldn't grasp a simple concept either.

"Bren, I know you can lie better than that. What have I told you? It's all about the timing," Sheryl lectured. "Try again, hm? This time, remember the timing and please don't try telling us that you sat at your desk and did paperwork."

"I was in the cages talking to some fucked up kid who tried to jump me and Vahan with a knife." Brenda grinned at the moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Maybe it was mean just _saying_ stuff like that, but it was fun.

"When was this?"

"Eh, Wednesday? Late. I was dropping Vahan off at his apartment."

Sheryl would have to talk to the girl without company, obviously. "The car worked well enough to make a stop? That's surprising."

"That's when it broke down," Brenda corrected. "We got out, the asshole tried to jump us... It didn't work, obviously."

"I'd hope not. Was there a reason for this one?"

"He was high. And a member of Team Rocket. And guess what! Apparently, I killed Giovanni." That got another choked off sound from Mewtwo. Brenda guessed it was a laugh. "How, I don't know, since there wasn't a mark on him."

"Next time you end up in the hospital because you apparently killed someone, I expect a phone call. You know, an occasional phone call just to say hello is nice, too. I was about to break into your house again."

"Sheryl, I've called. I've even called when you were supposed to be home."

"And most of the time, you got the answering machine. That's always amusing, isn't it, dear?" Leon said.

"And yet when I call you back, after waking up to find out that you called at two in the morning, there's no response," Sheryl said, irritated.

"Usually I'm working during the day, Sheryl. This, right now? It's abnormal."

"Very abnormal. You call because you want to get some dirt on the new cop in the station." Sheryl wanted to surprise Brenda, but didn't want to shock Leon too much. He was at a delicate stage in the ship, doing... something that took way too much coordination. "Is there a problem with Davis?"

"She's a bitch." Another sound from Mewtwo, this one unmistakably a laugh. "Shut _up_ Smith!"

"Just how much time have you spent with her, Bren? It sounds like you missed the entire meeting on Thursday."

"Five minutes was more then enough."

"Five minutes was enough to make you pick up a telephone to get information," Sheryl said. "What have I told you about the lying thing, Bren? Pick something believable."

Brenda glared at Mewtwo. He looked busy, distracted, as if he wouldn't hear a car bomb go off. She didn't trust it. "It's nothing. She's just an annoying bitch who... Yeah. It's nothing."

"You've said that twice, Bren. Quite a lot of attention for nothing."

"You know, I think I'm going to hang up now. No one believes me."

"You don't believe yourself. Now, do you want to talk about this, or should I head over there so that we can have all parties involved?"

"Sheryl! Leon, help me out here. Do I need a meddling mother coming and setting up camp in the local motel?"

"Brenda, I thought you had that couch."

"Forget the motel, I'll take the couch."

Brenda pulled the phone away, and stared at it for a moment. Her parents were freaky. She replaced the phone just in time to hear her freaky-mother start talking again.

"See?" Sheryl beamed. "It's odd enough behavior that you have Leon interested while he has a ship only halfway up."

"You two are fucking scary, you know that? No more talking at the same time."

"I can take a break from the ship, you know. Brenda, what's wrong with your couch?"

"That's what happens when you spend this much time with someone, Bren," she said. "There's nothing wrong with Brenda's couch, I sat on it when I broke into her house."

"It's... Rhonwen's couch. And I have a houndoom, Leon, before you ask."

"With your job? You talked her into this, didn't you Sheryl?"

"I did not," she said. "Giovanni bribed her with Rhonwen, before Vahan killed him because Giovanni tried his hand at killing Brenda." She delicately put her hand under the bottle, ready for when Leon dropped it. She set it on the table and continued. "That's when she ended up in the hospital."

"Brenda! Sheryl, you never told me! Brenda, Vahan killed Giovanni? And why would some mob boss try to kill you? And a hospital? You hate hospitals!"

"You two do realize that I haven't figured out my speaker phone yet and you're yelling in my ear, right?"

"That's what happens when you keep family in the dark. You get yelling in your ear," Sheryl said. "Now, is there anything else you'd like to share while Leon's still having an aneurism?"

"... Vahan's sleeping on my couch. Roaches."

"Explain that second bit in English?" Sheryl asked.

"Please?" Leon added, sounding plaintive.

Brenda rolled her eyes. "Roaches in the apartment. I don't need my partner dead of poison while the mess is being cleared out."'

"Brenda, it'll come up eventually."

"Until then," Brenda said, knowing Leon was in the dark and wanting to keep it that way, "I'm going to put it off. Diabetes weakens the heart, right?"

"Brenda, it's better to just get any shocks out now," Sheryl warned. "Especially the way he keeps trying to sneak sugar in for his coffee." She had at least put an end to sugar at work, with a few well-placed bribes and the odd threat.

"The fake stuff tastes horrible, Sheryl. Brenda, what is your mother talking about?"

"Uh... Car bomb, gotta go."

"Brenda Nicole Johnson, you will either stay on the phone or end up with both of us on your couch. If you must lie, come up with something better. I'm sure Vahan could help with that."

Brenda glared at Mewtwo, who'd spun around and was staring. "Yes, I have a middle name. Don't say a word."

"Brenda? Who are you talking to?" Leon asked.

"Are you going to tell him, or shall I?" Sheryl asked, very pleasantly.

"Gah, Sheryl! This is your fault."

"You're welcome, Bren. See what happens when you try to sneak around me and just get cop-talk while Leon's distracted?"

"Someone had better explain just what the two of you are talking about, now!" Leon set his tools down before he snapped them. "Brenda! Who are you talking to?"

Brenda started muttering curses under her breath.

"Her partner," Sheryl supplied. "Will you fill in details, Bren, or shall I?"

"Since you'll get it ever so fucking wrong, Sheryl, I figure I will. Leon, Vahan Smith happens to be my partner. He's dirt poor and doesn't actually have an apartment. He's been crashing on my couch since... Well, since he got stuck with me as a partner, actually. And no, I've never seen him naked." Well, not his human illusion, since pokemon didn't wear clothes... Brenda wasn't going there.

Mewtwo choked. Brenda flipped him the finger.

"Surprisingly enough, that's not calming me down, Brenda!"

"Brenda," Sheryl warned.

"What, Sheryl? I told the truth!" A heavily edited version, to be sure. Mewtwo was still staring, damn him.

"Let's start with the first issue. He's not dirt poor, on a full investigator's salary."

"Actually, he's on an officer's salary. He won't get the full until he hits... next week." At that, Mewtwo blinked, shook his head, and swung around to face the computer once more. Brenda was relieved.

"Brenda, this telephone conversation is your chance to tell things your way. When you hang up, then I'll be the one answering questions."

"Sheryl, I've told the truth. What do you want me to do, start making things up? Leon, I can send you Smith's file if you want it."

"Sheryl, I know Brenda's not telling me something. But I'm having trouble deciding what it is. At this point, I think it's the part where this Smith is sleeping on the couch." Leon paused, and took a deep breath. "Brenda, what have I told you about romance in the workplace?"

Sheryl was nearly fuchsia with the effort it took to not burst out laughing--and then she considered the possibility. Her daughter had been living with Vahan for quite some time, he seemed to like her...

"Leon! Are you out of your fucking mind? Me and- NO! Not now, not EVER goddamn it! I hope the Coffee God smites you and that you never get any sugar ever again!"

"Brenda, calm down," she said. "Now, do you want to talk, or do you want two uninvited guests some night at dinner?"

"You want to eat my cooking?" Brenda asked.

"Vahan's cooking."

"Great, vegetarian crap." Brenda rolled her eyes. "Leon, trust me, the guy's freaking nuts. Man wasn't meant to eat vegetables."

"But man can," Leon pointed out. "This guy cooks at your place now?"

Sheryl waited for a minute. Without a response, she spoke up. "That's all you, Brenda, until you let me explain things."

No fucking way. "I told you, Leon, Smith doesn't have his own apartment. He lives on my couch. Look, it's fine. Everything's fine. Sheryl's gone nuts, ignore anything she says, okay?"

"Brenda..." Leon warned.

"...Sheryl, I can't find the words. You say it."

"She met Vahan when she was working on a case, and there wasn't much of a chance for him to get an apartment. He's a pokemon who can very handily pass as human, when he feels like it. For whatever reason, he and Brenda work together and haven't killed each other yet."

Brenda waited for Leon's response. "Uh, Dad? You still there? Sheryl, is he dead or what?"

"He's thinking. Give him a minute, you know how he gets when he tries to fit together eight clues that don't go all at the same time."

"Yeah. I remember a few late night brooding sessions. Just so you know, he's the one who got me hooked on coffee at age... eleven."

"I know, and he's the one who showed you which classes would be useful if you wanted to be a cop."

"A pokemon?" Leon finally asked. "Why would a pokemon be pretending to be a human?"

"You know," Brenda said. "I think he wonders the same thing."

"Psychic, too," Sheryl said. "Brenda, I think we need to catch dinner sometime. You know how he was when Alison and Crack began living together."

"Uh, you mean the near panic attacks and threatening a guy three times his size and weight with death if he didn't behave? Yeah, I remember it."

"You're living with a guy, too." She decided to not think too much about species, because it probably was very rude. "Unless you want me to show Leon how to break into a house properly, without kicking in the door... I think it's time we had a proper family dinner. You and Vahan can come earlier, then we can get Ali and Crack over in time for dinner."

"Well, maybe." That kind of controlled chaos... she'd missed it. "Would... Meh, the car won't work. Oi, Mewtwo! You feel up for a quick teleportation some time soon?"

_(Certainly, Detective. Just as soon as I finish my work.)_

Brenda tried not to growl. "Wednesday good for you, 'rents?"

"Wednesday's fine," Sheryl said. "Does he need anything before he can teleport? I've known psychics who need to see the picture, or know where the place is in space."

"Dunno. If worst comes to worst, I guess I could always work up a good bout of homesickness."

_(It's fine, Detective.)_

"Psycho-boy says he's good though..." Brenda pulled the phone away again, and growled. "Mewtwo, stop listening in on my conversations!"

"Wednesday, then. I can have something for both vegetarians and carnivores, don't look at me like that Leon there won't be sugar."

"Sheryl, you're killing me," he grumbled.

"Better Sheryl then diabetes," Brenda pointed out.

"How many years have you been with the police, Leon?"

"Let me think. I entered right out of college, so going on my thirty."

"And I've never fussed about all the very reckless things you have done, /including/ that incident with the blue pickup truck and the black market. I do get to fuss about sugar, which you know perfectly well is bad for you."

"You know what, now I really am going to hang up. I have the feeling that this discussion could go on for... way too long. See you Wednesday, parental units. Buh-bye."

"Bye, Brenda, love you. No sneaking sugar for your reprobate father, please."

"Bye Brenda... Sheryl, I wasn't going to ask."

Brenda rolled her eyes and hung up. Great... A nosy psychic to deal with, now.

_(Nicole?)_ Mewtwo asked, finally giving up his self control. He chuckled at the expression on Brenda's face.

Brenda, for her part, started looking for Rhonwen again. Damn it, no houndoom in sight… What, was she supposed to maul the psycho-cat herself? Fuck.

**Saturday**

The phone was ringing.

Brenda cracked open one eye, and groaned. She could just see her alarm clock. The glowing red numbers swam into focus… Damn it. Three in the morning.

"Whoever you are," she mumbled into the phone. "You're dead."

"Brenda!" Leon. Why was Leon calling at three in the morning? "How the fuck did you end up living with a psychic pokemon?"

"Details finally sunk in?" Brenda asked, grinning. She should have been expecting this. "I'll tell you Wednesday, Dad. Good night."

She hung up the phone on Leon's howled cursing.

**End Note**

Yup, more light hearted fluff-ish stuff. A few hints for future chapters (dinner at the Lances, can you say 'chaos'?) but... well, things are going to take a turn for the complicated. So complicated that I wrote out the plot-line. And color coded it.


	5. Family

**Wednesday**

Two hours was one and a half too many, Brenda decided. She'd been dealing with a stressed out psychic cat for a bit more then two hours, but it'd only gotten worse the closer they came to Celadon. She wasn't sure just what he was nervous about. It was just her family.

Brenda nearly swerved into a telephone pole when she realized that- it was her family. She was taking a guy- a pokemon, but still a guy- home to meet her family.

Shit.

_(Detective? Just what- could you please refrain from stomping on the brakes in that manner?)_ Mewtwo clutched the 'chicken stick', and stared at her.

"Yeah, yeah. Damn." He'd be seeing her childhood home. Sheryl- or Alison, but Sheryl was most likely- would probably give him the grand tour, including her old bedroom. The one that still had all those posters up on the walls.

Shit, fuck, and goddamn it. She'd have to get away and take those things down. Had Sheryl taken down her drawings?

_(Detective? Could you please not do that? I'm not sure the tires can handle-)_ Mewtwo shut up when Brenda nearly sideswiped a parked van. He clenched his eyes shut when she accelerated towards a yellow light, only to stomp on the breaks when the light turned red.

Fortunately, there was no one behind them. Mewtwo felt his stomach leap up into his throat when Brenda snarled another curse. Perhaps spending time with her family wouldn't be so bad. It would certainly be safer.

**Wednesday**

Brenda flipped through her keys until she found the right one. "Don't push the… Never mind." She sighed as Mewtwo pushed the doorbell. His expression as the 'Robin Hood Men in Tights' song played almost made the annoyance worth it.

Almost.

"I did tell you not to push it," she pointed out. "Come on." She tried the door, and found it unlocked. She shoved it open just in time to hear Leon yell.

"The door's open!"

"We guessed!" she yelled back. "Hi! We're here!"

"Look who made it! You haven't been home in forever, Bren. Hi, Vahan--do you prefer Vahan or Mewtwo?" Sheryl stuck her head out the kitchen doorway.

_(Mewtwo,)_ he said, glancing at Brenda.

"Mom, do you think you could, I don't know, handle the introductions between Dad and Mewtwo? I just have to... pick something up in my room. Back in a sec."

"Sure, Bren." Sheryl smiled fondly as her daughter made an abrupt exit. Years as a detective, and all the subtlety of a brick. "Leon will make it to the front room eventually," she said from the kitchen's open doorway before moving back to the stove. "Alison rigged the doorbell... I'm not sure when she did it, anymore, but we never have gotten around to changing it."

Leon meandered towards the noise, and grinned. "You'd be Brenda's partner, then. Which is it, Mewtwo or Vahan?"

_(Mewtwo,)_ he answered. _(Sheryl told you?)_

"I tell him lots of things," she said. "What is he supposed to know now?" Sheryl closed her husband's hand around a spoon. "Test the pasta for me, hon? Thanks."

Mewtwo blinked, and looked between Sheryl and Leon. _(Ah, about me. The lack of surprise... I know the Detective didn't.)_

"That you're her partner, that you're psychic, that you're a pokemon, that she still has a plant on her desk..." Sheryl gave the pot only half her attention. "Brenda and Alison are our daughters, Mewtwo. It'll take a bit more to surprise us."

"Alison's prom dress did a good job of it, though." Leon frowned at the spoon. "It tastes fine, hon."

"That means it's done." She glanced at her hands, which were covered in her hot mitts. She had another pot to deal with, Brenda had mentioned something about telekinesis... "Mind if I recruit you to drain pasta?" she asked Mewtwo. "Somebody who shan't be named borrowed my oven mitts for a project, and they've not been seen since."

Mewtwo lifted the pasta pot and floated it over to the sink. When it tilted, the pasta remained in the pot. The water did not. _(The Detective said Alison and someone named 'Crack' would be here soon?)_

"The Detective did," Brenda muttered, rejoining the group. Posters, drawings, all had been shoved under the bed and out of sight. "They should be here any minute. Hi, dad."

"Crack, who isn't quite a son-in-law yet, but who will be if he ever proposes to Ally," Sheryl said.

"He'd better," Leon muttered. "If he knows what's good for him, he will."

"Leon just doesn't want bastard grandchildren," Brenda told Mewtwo.

"Leon just doesn't want to think that his Ali is already living with the man." Sheryl moved one more pan, and then turned off her stove. "When they're married, then he can pretend that grandchildren are just a natural return on the money put into a wedding."

Brenda tilted her head as the doorbell rang again. "Alison's here," she said. "The door's open!"

Alison stepped in, dragging Crack behind her by one wrist. Brenda arched one eyebrow; Crack looked to be a good six-foot-ten-inches, which was two feet and six inches taller then Alison. Crack also had shoulders nearly as wide as the door, with the muscle to go with it all. "Hi! Crack that's my psycho sister Brenda and her pokemon boyfriend Mewtwo."

It took Brenda one second. "Alison!"

"Alison," Sheryl scolded absently, "be nice and help set the table. Hello, Crack."

"Hi, Mrs. Lance." Crack stayed a step outside of the kitchen, if only to leave room.

Mewtwo shook his head, and eyed Alison. He carefully edged behind Brenda, never mind that she was frothing with rage. _(Hello Alison. Hello... Crack.)_ Surely that wasn't the man's name. Who would name anyone, even a human redwood, 'Crack'?

No matter what Crack said, it was going to be wrong. "Hey, Mewtwo." Pokemon boyfriend, okay. Of course he'd heard odder things, he owned a nightclub. But Brenda's boyfriend?

"Alison, he's my _partner_," Brenda finally managed. "Not my boyfriend!" She nodded to Crack. "If you hurt my sister, I'll chop off your balls and feed 'em to you." She glared at Alison again.

"Language, Brenda," Leon warned, before Sheryl could. "Get... What can she get, Sher?"

"Brenda!" Sheryl warned. "We have company, and... she can go set the table. With Alison."

Brenda managed a strangled growl, and stalked over to the cupboards. "Shove over, Alison."

"In the dining room, please," Sheryl requested.

"Whatever, _ma_," Brenda spat, as Alison giggled. "Come on, you wanna-be nudist. Let's get this over with."

"Yes ma'am! Crack, sweetie, don't worry. Only Brenda bites."

Biting was easier to handle than Sheryl and Leon. "Do you need me to help with anything, Mr. Lance?" Crack could have asked Sheryl, but he had a good idea of what she would say.

"You can propose to my little girl," Leon grumbled. "But if you won't do that, you can at least cart the food over to the table."

He couldn't help twitching just a little, as he made sure Alison was at least out of sight. "I'll help with the food, Mr. Lance."

"I thought you would. Mewtwo, would you... Never mind. Guests aren't put to work."

_(You're making... Crack... work,)_ Mewtwo pointed out. _(Last I checked he was a guest.)_

"He'll be family as soon as he proposes," Sheryl said. "How about we put you to work the next time you come over?"

Mewtwo just shook his head. The next time? He only wanted to survive this time!

"Well, Sheryl? The girls should be done. I'll take the coffee." Leon grabbed the pot. "God knows you can't have cops without coffee. There'll be sugar, right?"

"Fake sugar," she said firmly. "Mewtwo, would you like to take a seat in the dining room? We have mismatched chairs, and you and Crack can figure out which ones work best."

Mewtwo nodded, and retreated towards Brenda's mind, just down the hall. _(I am best when I do not have a seat back to contend with,)_ he said. _(You... I'm sorry. I just cannot call you 'Crack' with any sense of ease.)_

"If it's that bad, you could try Anthony," the big man said. "Just that Anthony's not a good name for a nightclub owner. Tell someone your name is Crack, you don't even have to crack your knuckles before he's on his way out, no funny business." He shrugged. "It's easier to avoid fights." Replacing the mirror behind the bar was no easy task, and expensive besides.

_(Anthony,)_ Mewtwo said, relieved. _(Yes, that would work. Though I doubt your methods would work on the Detective.)_

"When I get the tougher cases, then I usually just tell them straight out I will sue them for any damage done to my bar. They look like they want to consider it, I mention my lawyer." He smiled, just a little. "Think that might help. Brenda can't quite believe that one if my friends is a lawyer."

_(I... Imagine not.)_ Not, of course, that Brenda didn't have a friend for a lawyer herself. Though she would deny it. _(How long have you known the family?)_

"About two months after I started dating Alison, she brought me home for a family dinner. The next day, her parents started on about me proposing." Crack had smiled, at the thought of meeting Alison, but that faded. "That was about a year ago."

"You know," Brenda said. "If you'd just propose, you'd be done with all the harping."

"Well, until someone starts nagging about babies," Alison said. "Crack!" She leapt forward, arms wide.

He curled an arm around her waist. "Hey, Ali. Think you could distract your dad? I tried, when they called about the dinner, but he only got two sentences into his new ship before he started after me."

"Well..." Alison grinned, and started playing with his shirt. Brenda rolled her eyes. "I guess I could. I'll just mention my new clothing line. Swimsuits."

"...She's fucking nuts," Brenda told Mewtwo. "I've been saying it for years, but no one's believed me."

"And if that doesn't work, you could tell him that the designer from Lavender sent a letter about lingerie." Crack ignored the commentary from Brenda. "Think that'd distract your mom?" A man could hope.

"What are you three plotting?" Leon left Mewtwo out of the group, because the psychic obviously wanted to be somewhere- anywhere- else. "Crack, you left me and Sheryl to carry in the food. Go sit down, the lot of you."

"Sorry, Mr. Lance." He didn't mention that he had been talking to Mewtwo, or that it would be awkward to walk in on potential in-laws while they were distracted.

"Leon, lay off. Come on, Mewtwo. There's a barstool just for you." Brenda grabbed Mewtwo's arm and tugged.

"Crack, hon, let's sit down. And don't worry, you can call dad 'Leon', okay?"

"Ali, we've been over this," he muttered.

"Sit down, please." Leon felt like tearing at his hair. He set the coffee pot in front of Brenda's seat, knowing it would be half empty by the time he got his mug. "Let's all just... eat dinner."

Sheryl set two dishes on the table, then rubbed Leon's shoulders. "I'll hop up if we run out of anything. You get to sit, after the shift you pulled, alright? Make sure that all table decorum is observed."

"Which means," Brenda translated, "elbows off the table, no throwing food, and no death threats. Or threats of fashion consultations completely unasked for."

Mewtwo felt himself go pale under his fur.

"Fashion consultations that are asked for... those are up for debate." Sheryl smiled, trying her very best to look guileless. "Pass dishes to the left, please, so we don't have collisions."

Alison grabbed the mashed potatoes, and handed them over to Mewtwo. "Mom, dresses. Brenda, you're stuck with a measuring after dinner. You promised. Black, remember?"

Brenda looked over at Crack. "I thought-" she began.

"Later," Alison said.

"Dresses plural?" Sheryl asked. "It would be nice, if only to have them in your closet, Brenda."

"I'd rather poke my eyes out with a sharp stick."

"Brenda!" Leon snapped.

"Bren, please," Sheryl said. "You promised to let her make you a dress, you did not promise to wear it in public."

"But, mom, that's the whole point of a dress," Alison complained. "Wearing it. If I make it easy to move it, you could wear it to one of your bar fights."

_(Bar fights?)_ Mewtwo asked. He'd never seen Brenda go out before, for anything outside of work.

"Not in my bar," Crack said instantly. He'd only heard rumors, but they were enough.

"Alison, it'd get ripped, even if you used one of your stupid new fabrics. I used to go, and now I don't," she told Mewtwo. "And of course not in your bar, Crack, the drinks are too expensive."

"Because it's not two dollars a pint? It costs more if you actually keep the lights on and hire a bartender who isn't named Moe."

"The bartenders named Moe or Joe or what have you are all scared of me. They see me and duck." Brenda grinned.

"Most customers like bartenders who will listen to their problems, and don't like fights where people end up airborne," Crack said, smiling despite himself. He was all up for a good bar fight, if it was at someone else's place.

"Well, I hate having people listen to my problems. They're mine. I'm not going to sob all over some stranger's shoulder."

Alison rolled her eyes and turned to Mewtwo. "While those two are bonding... Have you ever thought of blue?"

_(...What?)_

Leon turned to Sheryl. "This was your idea, wasn't it?"

"My idea?"

"Having them all over," Leon said.

"It's good to get everyone together once in a while," Sheryl said, her eyes to her left.

Leon looked over, and groaned. Mewtwo had gotten up and was backing away from Alison, Brenda was baring her teeth at Crack, and the young would-be-son-in-law looked nervous. "Next time, let's have them all together two at a time, alright?"

"Wimp," Sheryl accused, smiling. "Ali! We agreed to avoid completely unasked for fashion consultations, and blue dye qualifies. Crack, Brenda, you could try to keep it a little more civilized." She glared at Crack, solely because he hadn't proposed to Ali, then frowned at Brenda for good measure. Brenda could have tried looking out for her partner.

"What's this about blue dye?" Brenda looked over at Alison.

"Don't you think Mewtwo would look nice with blue dye?"

"No, I think he'd look like an idiot."

"No uninvited fashion consultations at the table, and certainly no opinions about color changes," Sheryl said. "Would anyone like to change the subject?"

"Bitch-lady at the station?" Brenda suggested.

"No." Leon shook his head. "Just no. Pass the coffee."

Sheryl tilted her head as she thought. If there were six people at a table, all of them old enough to be reasonable adults, and conversations revolving around blue dye and bar fights... "Screw coffee. Anyone else want a whiskey?"

**End Notes**

Yup, I skipped over nearly a whole week. Not that you guys have to worry, you didn't miss much- grocery shopping, a few snark-fests, some court dates... Nothing big. The _real_ fun starts on Thursday. I figured the quicker we got to it, the happier we'd all be- I didn't really want to write boring grocery store visits.

Anyways, thanks as always to Call for beta-ing this chapter, and for playing Sheryl and Crack. I still say the two of us were drunk on SOMETHING when we wrote this... Jeez.


	6. Country

**Thursday**

Carmen Davis made sure to pointedly glance at her watch as Vahan Smith and his partner walked into the conference room. "You're late." Thirty-two minutes late, to be precise.

"Tough," Brenda snapped. "Murder trumps meeting."

"Have you ever heard of calling ahead when you're late? It's polite, and it's even standard protocol." The previous week had been a fluke, it seemed. Maybe she had been daydreaming.

Mewtwo pulled out a chair, and sat down. Brenda scowled, and remained standing. "He," she said, nodding towards Mewtwo, "did. Dispatch."

"That's very nice, but doesn't address the problem," Davis said. "One hour per week, I don't care if you do work on your murder while I do this case."

"Dispatch- Officer Jenkins- said he would let you know we would be late," Mewtwo said. He felt a slight twinge for Officer Jenkins, but shoved it aside.

"He didn't." Davis had left a case of her own behind to come to Viridian, and could have accomplished more from her own office. "Are both of you available for the next half hour, then? I have identified several primary targets."

"Yeah. Fine, whatever." Brenda yanked at a chair and straddled it backwards. "Illuminate, oh wise one." Her sneer turned her words into an insult.

Davis reminded herself that she was a professional. "The small-time groups associated with Rocket. I can talk to the officers in Vice about the specifics, but my plan involves working from the very bottom."

Brenda narrowed her eyes. "Yeah, Smith mentioned that. Why? We know who the head is, why not just cut it off?"

"Because the gang won't disappear." Davis met Johnson's gaze. "Giovanni is dead. Team Rocket is still a presence in Viridian and elsewhere, but is simply under new management. If the structure is intact, someone will replace the head."

"Then we'll just have to keep cutting it off, won't we?"

"You won't get anywhere. If you take the gang out from under the leader, you have less bloodshed, less chaos, and end up with no gang presence."

Brenda braced her hands on the seat back, but didn't stand. "It'd be quicker to simply take out the head, every time."

"You don't accomplish anything. You just make the gang scramble to reorganize. There will be a brief decrease in activity, but in the end you might just get a better leader in."

Mewtwo placed one hand on Brenda's shoulder, to stall a response. "I'm sorry, Davis. I did explain... Detective, this is what Davis does."

Brenda turned and glared. "Does it look like I give a flying fuck?"

"Obviously not. You can disagree with me all you like, but the orders about this case come from me. You are welcome to go kill heads in your spare time, but that is a criminal offense."

"Did anyone say anything about playing the vigilante?" Brenda asked. "No. As for your methods, _Lieutenant_, they're slow and useless."

"Slow, yes. Effective, very. It just takes a little patience, and cooperation between departments."

Brenda snorted. "Obviously you're living in la-la land, lady. There's no cooperation between departments here."

"Too many cockroaches." Davis smiled, mockingly pleasant. She had no intention of explaining. "I've noticed. That's why I am dealing with Vice myself, and taking my pick of officers to deal with."

"Why don't you play with that for right now, and leave the bigger nasties to the people who can handle them?" Brenda smiled back, understanding exactly what Davis meant.

"Why don't you enjoy dealing with one murder at a time? You can't kill one person and destroy a gang. Rocket's too diverse for that."

"Then let them break up and kill themselves," Brenda snapped.

"They won't. They need a little help to be split into parts."

Mewtwo spoke before Brenda could. "Is there any particular way we could do that while picking off the smaller roaches?" he asked. "Many smaller gangs would be easier to deal with, by far, then one large one."

"I've started working on a few strategies," she said. "I'm not familiar with Viridian, so most of my research has been looking into the background."

Brenda turned to glare at Mewtwo. "No, you can't waste any more time on that," she growled. "Let the non-hacker waste her time."

"Wasting time? Rocket kills, Detective Johnson, and contributes to most of the armed crime in your city."

"It's not my business to close that down," she pointed out. "Murder cop, remember? Or can't you handle more then two thoughts in your head at a time?"

"You would be the one with that problem, if you deal with one murder at a time."

"Several, actually." Thankfully, most of them were pretty simple one-off kills. "I doubt you could manage the same."

"Think what you like, Detective Johnson. If you have nothing to contribute, and mean to prevent your partner from helping, then bring something to occupy yourself with."

Mewtwo winced at Brenda's unspoken response. Davis would never know just what the Detective had thought and felt at that moment, and would sleep all the better for it. "Ah, what do you think we should begin to do now, Davis?" he asked.

"How many cockroaches in Vice?" That would be the squad that dealt with Rocket the most, and navigating it alone could be tricky.

Mewtwo tapped his lip. "I couldn't say for certain," he began.

"Almost all of them," Brenda said. She glared at the table. "Anyone above officer, save Ellen. Ellen O'Neil."

"What would Ellen O'Neil think about talking to her perps, instead of just leaving them for the lawyers? For Viridian, it would be easiest to start with the scut drug dealers and the streetwalkers."

"I don't know what she'd think, I'm not her. But she's a good one. Got shot a while back, during a bust." Brenda's expression bordered on demonic. "One of the attackers managed to land a hit on her shoulder. It was covered by her vest, but it spinned her around some, and one of her team hit her in the hip. Officially, it's an accident, but she was going to take down one of the higher up drug dealers."

"Your station is very heavily corrupted. I don't know how to help with that, except as a side effect. That's another reason to start small. The dirty cops don't care if a few twenty-dollar girls get put into a halfway house, or if their low-profit drug dealers get rehab."

"Just help me clean up my house." Brenda felt tired, of this discussion, of thinking about dirty cops. "I'm tired of good cops getting hit by bad."

"How many?"

She raked one hand through her hair. "Homicide's good, except for... Benson. Payne. Those two are on the take. Dallas, I'm sure, Peabody, maybe. That'd be it. But outside of it? Vice? Patrol? Patrol especially, if you're not on the take you might as well be dead."

Davis wrote down the names in shorthand. "From what I've been able to find, Dallas and Peabody both get a little extra on the side. There was almost a big backlash when Giovanni died, and Peabody rearranged the departments again."

"Damn. I hate those two."

"Other advantage of starting very slowly," Davis said, smiling. "By the time anyone figures out I'm not twiddling my thumbs, I'm too big to ignore. At that point, killing just makes me a martyr."

"Martyrs suck," Brenda said, and stood up. "It won't happen in my house."

"That's the general consensus," she said. "Dirty cops don't do well in jail, but somehow that's never kept me awake at night."

Brenda nodded, and turned. "Smith'll be here for the meetings. I've got better things to do."

"Mind if I direct questions about the department at you? You know the cops here."

"Sorry, I've got a murder to investigate. You can fit your questions around my schedule, later."

"I can manage that."

"Good." Brenda practically lunged for the door, and slammed it closed behind her.

Mewtwo blinked, and looked between the door and Davis. "Uh... What just happened?"

"I have no idea, but don't want to think about it too much," she said. "Good to know about O'Neil and the rest."

He nodded, and cleared his throat. "Alright. So, you'll want to talk to O'Neil? Do you want me to arrange the meeting...?"

"I might try bumping into her on the way out. If that doesn't work, then I'll take you up on the offer," she said. "It's for both our sakes to have a casual meeting."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

**Thursday**

Brenda took a deep breath and held it. Breathed out, and sucked in another breath. After she'd repeated the process a good fifteen times, she didn't feel like picking up her phone and chucking it across the room.

Well, not much, anyways.

She dialed Mara-anni's number, and waited. If it rang more then three times, she was hanging up.

"Hello? Yuzuki Mara-anni, speaking."

"Mara-anni? It's Brenda."

"Brenda! Darling, how are you?"

Brenda swallowed a growl. "Fine, fine. Look, I need a warrant."

"Oh? What for?"

"I caught a case this morning. I need to arrest the guy responsible."

"Oh dear, what happened?"

"We have reason to believe he was stabbed. There was a sharp object sticking out of his chest."

"Brenda, you know it's not nice to make fun of people. Even if they are dead."

Was Mara-anni _serious_? "I wasn't making fun. Look, I have to arrest the guy's drug buddy. His prints were on record, and the knife. Could you whip me up something?"

"Alright. You can pick it up early tomorrow, I'll leave it with Jason."

"Tomorrow?"

"I do need the judge to sign, remember."

Brenda sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I remember." After ten years as a cop and however many times Leon had grumbled during her childhood, she'd damn well better remember. "Still, can't you get someone to sign today?"

"I'm sorry, Brenda, but I don't think so. Freddie's in court and Bill's out in the mountains somewhere."

Freddie and Bill. Mara-anni knew a bunch of freaks, even if they were judges. "Right. Fine, tomorrow's fine. I'll terrorize Jason before coming into work, then. Bye."

"Goodbye, Brenda. I hope you have a good day."

Brenda waited until she'd hung up the phone. "Fat chance of that," she muttered. She glared at the plant, just because it was there and alive and on her desk.

"Detective Johnson?"

Brenda grunted and looked up. "What?" Did she know the officer? Probably not. Except for Mewtwo- and he wasn't really a police officer, anyways- they all looked the same. "Do you want something? The bathroom's that way and the coffee's over there. Go away."

"No, detective, it's not that. Uh, dispatch said you were in the house?"

Why, she wondered, did the brat's statement come out as a question? "I'm at my desk, aren't I?"

"Uh, yes, you are. Uhm, they told me, I mean, I'm supposed to tell you that there's been a murder at Snowhill. You're supposed to go check it out." The kid looked nervous as hell, looking everywhere except Brenda. His fingers were twitching.

Brenda rested her forehead in one hand. "Fine. Will you go away now?"

"Yes ma'am."

She looked up, ready to tell the brat that she preferred 'sir', only to see his back. She scowled, and went to find Mewtwo. He was probably still in the conference room, chatting with Davis.

He wasn't. The room was empty. Brenda frowned at that. Her call hadn't taken that long, neither had the conversation, or whatever it had been. Of course, Davis could have gone down the garage. It would be like Mewtwo to walk her down.

She headed for the stairwell. It'd be quicker then the elevator.

"Smith," she snapped, coming out in the garage. He was there, standing by an empty parking space. She could just see a car's taillights, before the garage door closed and blocked off the view.

"Yes, Detective?"

There was something… hard… in his voice. Brenda shook her head. It didn't matter. "We've got a case," she said. "Get in the car, we'll get details on the way."

**Thursday**

_Female body found in the woods. District sheriff called it in, asking for backup. Town doctor acting as on-site coroner, sheriff's deputy already took pictures._

It wasn't a lot of detail, Brenda had to admit, but it was enough to give her an idea.

Some kids, probably, had found the body. In her experience, kids were always getting into places they shouldn't be. Tell them to stay out of the woods, they'd go right in. Tell them to stay out because it'd been a couple of dry weeks, and they'd work even harder in order to make things burn.

Didn't mean they deserved to find a dead body, but maybe they'd think twice next time they wanted to have a few beers out in the woods.

The sheriff in charge of the town and surrounding area wouldn't have a clue. He'd be used to drunk drivers, some nasty crashes, but deliberate murders? No, he'd call in the big city cops because he wouldn't know what else to do and wanted someone else to call all the shots.

"Why," she muttered, "do people live out in the middle of the wilderness?" Fields. She could handle forest, she lived near one. Heck, occasionally she'd walk out into the forest. But fields were a different matter. You stuck pokemon, great big pokemon called tauros and milktank and left them there to do whatever it was they did… Freaky.

_(They most likely find it peaceful. Turn left here.)_

"There is no fucking- oh. There it is." Brenda turned down a nearly invisible road, and clenched her teeth. "Goddamn gravel. Pavement, people! It's a good thing! Ever fucking soul-suckers."

Mewtwo sent Brenda a pitying look. _(It's not that bad,)_ he said.

"Shut up or I'll make you walk."

_(You'd get lost within seconds.)_

Brenda snorted. She could see the town- and pavement- just ahead. "There we go! Now, where's the sheriff's office?"

_(He's not going to meet us there, remember? He's going to meet us near the forest. Don't leave this street.)_

"How do you know this?"

_(I lifted the directions from someone's mind. I think it was the sheriff himself.)_

Brenda growled, and found a parking space. She could see the sheriff now, a short, busty redhead, who stood with her arms folded. The wide brimmed, brown hat suited her.

"Detective Johnson and Officer Smith," Brenda said, walking up. She flashed her badge and hooked it on her belt. "You'd be…?"

"Sheriff Roberts, good to meet you, Johnson. If you'll follow me?"

Brenda nodded, and fell into step. "What can you tell me?"

"A couple of hikers found the body, just off one of the trails. They freaked and ran for town. The local scavengers haven't gotten to her yet, so I'd say she's fresh."

"How fresh?" Brenda asked, interested.

"I think she was dumped within a half hour of discovery. The pokemon in this area can be vicious when there's food."

Brenda ignored Mewtwo's brooding air. "I just bet. So you came out to see what was up?"

"Yup. I decided to call it in as soon as I saw it. I know what I'm good at, Detective, and that's drunks and tickets. Not so much with murder."

"That's what I'm good at, Sheriff." Brenda shoved her hands in her pockets, and studied the area. Trees everywhere, a couple good sized rocks. At least the path was easy to follow.

"Here we are, Detective, Officer." Sheriff Roberts ducked under some police tape. Brenda nearly smirked at the dust she saw on the tape. Apparently the Sheriff's office didn't have a great need to cordon off areas.

Then she looked at the body.

"Shit," she murmured. The victim- nude, lying spread eagle- had dark blonde hair and a healthy breast size. Even from where she stood, Brenda could tell that the victim had been raped and strangled.

**End Notes**

And now things get dark. This story is now officially an M rating. You've been warned.


	7. Son

**Thursday**

Autopsies sucked. It wasn't that there was a lot of blood, handling of dead people's organs, or that most coroners were psychotic lunatics who cut up dead people for a living. It was, Brenda decided, that she was in the middle of nowhere forced to sit on a bench and wait outside the local doctor's basement-slash-morgue. She couldn't go out into the field- because the field was a bloody forest, and what did she know about a forest? Nothing, that's what- and she couldn't talk to Mewtwo, because he _was_ out in the field because he _did_ know about the goddamn forest.

She was bored, there was nothing for her to do until Mewtwo, Sheriff Roberts, and the Sheriff's underlings returned. Or until the coroner came out, then she could talk to him.

She checked her watch again. Five minutes had passed.

"I should have brought something to read," she muttered. Which led, of course, to five minutes of contemplation on books. Sort of. More of a contemplation on how Brenda hadn't read anything other then reports and case files in… far too long.

Did she even own any books?

"Ah, detective Johnson?"

Brenda jumped slightly, and looked up. It was the coroner. "Ah, yes?" What was his name again?

The man was gray at the temples, and had a receding hairline. He had a paunch, his arms were flabby, and his eyes, behind the half-moon glasses, were a watery gray. He'd introduced himself as the town doctor and occasional coroner, but Brenda couldn't for the life of her remember his name.

"I've completed my study." The coroner smiled, a tiny little sad expression, just as unmemorable as the rest of him. "Would you like to step into my office?"

"Sure." Brenda shoved her hands in her pockets, and followed the coroner down the hall. Once she was seated in the visitor's chair, she leaned forward and frowned.

"So. What can you tell me?"

The coroner adjusted his glasses. "I can tell you that the man was average in size. The bruising suggests he used his thumbs to compress her windpipe."

Brenda nodded, and leaned back. "Strangulation's a face-to-face killing. He must have got off on it, as well as the rape."

"I won't pretend to know anything about a killer's psychology, detective." He sighed, and looked down at his desk. "It's enough to make me consider retiring."

"Oh?" Brenda tapped one finger against her bad knee. "Did you manage to get a semen sample?"

"Yes."

"Then send it to the lab in Viridian, please." She chewed her lip. She was forgetting something- oh, right. Small town, this guy was one of two doctors and an intern. "Did you know the victim?"

"No, detective. It would be easier for you if I did, wouldn't it. However…" The man sighed, and spread his hands. "We have a tourist industry in the fall. People come from miles to see our trees. The season is just beginning to pick up."

"So, she was a tourist. Great." Brenda rubbed one hand over her face. "Did you do the fingerprints?"

"Yes, but- I hope you can run them. I've never actually had many reasons to use the machine."

Brenda made a quick decision. "I'll take them to the Sheriff's office, there'll probably be a machine there I can use." And she'd be there when the field crew got back. "Thanks for your help, doctor."

"Happy to help, detective. Ah… a moment, I'll have her fingerprints for you."

Brenda nodded, and settled back in her chair to wait. She'd have to check up on Alison, make sure she hadn't decided to wear her natural hair color or visit a forest or whatever.

**Thursday**

The machines in the Sheriff's office worked ten times better then the shit Brenda was normally forced to work with. She only had to smack the computer once.

Because the computers and scanners were superior, Brenda had a name and next of kin for the victim. Marie Allemon, and her next of kin were her parents, Joel and Christine Allemon, from Goldenrod, Johto. She was going to have to call them, she was going to have to tell them their daughter was dead.

She was going to destroy their world.

Putting it off was only going to twist her stomach into even more knots. It already felt like someone had taken her internal organs and squeezed.

There was a phone number for the next of kin- home, business, and two cell phones. Brenda chose home, and hoped it was the right choice. The phone only rang twice before someone picked it up.

"Allemon residence, this is Christine speaking. How can I help you?"

Christ, Brenda thought. People actually answered the phone like that? "Mrs. Allemon? Is your husband home?"

"Oh, you need to speak to Joel? Just give me a second, he's in the basement."

Brenda opened her mouth to respond, only to roll her eyes. The clunk of phone hitting solid surface was the only clue she needed. There would be no one to talk to, not until someone picked up the phone again.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Allemon? I actually need to speak to you and your wife." Better to tell both of them at once. That way, neither would have to tell the other.

"Let me just set the phone to speaker, then. There we are. Who are you?"

They only just got around to asking that? "My name is Detective Johnson. I'm calling from Snowhill, Kanto. It's about your daughter." Quick and fast, that was the only way to do this. "I'm sorry, but your daughter is dead."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Then, Mr. Allemon spoke up. "You're lying. This- this is a sick joke. Be sure we're calling the real cops, you-"

"Mr. Allemon, I am not joking. I'm sorry. But your daughter, Marie, is dead. She's been identified through fingerprints. You have my word that I will bring your killer to justice."

There was more silence. Brenda closed her eyes. If she listened closely, she could hear Mrs. Allemon start to sob.

"When can we claim the body?" Mr. Allemon. He sounded like the earth had been torn from beneath his feet.

"Not yet, I'm sorry. Until the case is closed… I'm sorry. I'm afraid I have to ask, but did your daughter have any enemies?"

"No. No. I- we have to go now. Goodbye detective."

"Goodbye."

Brenda hung up the phone, and hunched over until her head was resting on the desk.

**Friday**

"-Alright, Roberts. I'll let you know as soon as the lab has anything." Brenda nodded, even though Sheriff Roberts wouldn't be able to see it. "Right. Good luck to you too. Bye." She hung up, and rubbed at her ear. "I hate this," she muttered.

Damn him, Mewtwo heard her. "Why?" He leaned on her desk.

"Because I'm here, when everything that needs to be done is over there." Except they were waiting on lab reports, and no one trusted the fax machines. Not even Mewtwo, who could get the damn things to sit up and beg. "Right, let's see. Petker."

Mewtwo looked confused. "Who?"

"Smith, think back nine days. Girl who poisoned her boyfriend with Tim Horton's soup. Ring any bells?"

"Now I remember, yes. What about her?"

"Her court date's scheduled, and in the mean time, she made bail. I want you to write up yet another report on the incident, file it, so we have more paper for the lawyers to play with." Brenda waved one hand. "Hop to it."

"Yes, Detective."

She looked up and frowned. Sarcasm was the norm, in this sort of situation, but resentment- she thought they'd worked past it by now.

Mewtwo had already returned to his desk. There was no way she was going to go over and start talking about something she thought she'd heard. There would be no point to it, and she wasn't going to waste her time.

Autumn was a good time for Homicide, in Viridian, so long as you didn't mind boredom. The usual rush of murders in the summer, brought on by heat that shortened tempers and fried brains, tended to die down. People weren't confined to their homes the way they were in winter, either, which meant no one would go stir-crazy enough to kill off anyone they lived with. Which wasn't to say people didn't manage to get themselves killed off, because they did. The work load was just lighter, that was all.

"You'd think there'd at least be a bunch of rioting trainers, though," Brenda muttered. The Gym was still closed. Shouldn't someone have protested?

"Detective, why are you longing for murder and mayhem?"

"Just the mayhem, M-Smith." Damn, she'd nearly slipped. "I can do without the murder."

Maybe it was time to clean out her mail box. The gods above and below only knew it needed it. There was probably a years worth of junk mail scattered throughout the pile.

She tossed the more obvious junk into the garbage- there was a flyer for Viagra, which just made her shudder- and then flipped through the rest of the papers.

Another quarter was shoved into the trash, having to do with stuff relevant a good year before. She hadn't gone to the Christmas Eve party, because there would have been mistletoe and then she'd have to punch one of her co-workers. Not a good thing, no matter what time of year it was.

She was contemplating a note on 'sexual harassment in the workplace', trying to decide if 'reporting the incident to your superior' really worked. She preferred just kneeing the bastard in the balls, letting that speak for her. Or at least, she had. No one had been stupid enough to try anything in years.

"Detective Johnson?"

"Nnn?" Seriously, would Officer Bojenski have stopped touching her if she'd gone to her sergeant at the time? No. "What?"

It was the officer from before, whatever his name was. The new guy who seemed to be playing intern. "This is for you, sir." He held out a file. "It's about a case?"

"Yeah, thanks. What's your name?"

"I, uh- Chad, ma'am. Officer Bunker, I mean." The officer blushed, and ducked his head.

"Well, Officer Bunker, thanks. And I prefer to be called 'sir'."

"Yes, sir. I'll just… go…" Bunker jerked his hand, gesturing towards the hallway at the other end of the room.

"You do that." Brenda flipped open the file, and growled. Damn scientists. "Smith! Get over here and explain what the hell 'Deoxyribonucleic acid' is!" It was, she thought, a sort of victory that she hadn't stumbled over the damn word. Even if she couldn't understand what it was, she could at least pronounce it properly.

Mewtwo sighed, and stood up. "Let me see it?"

Brenda practically shoved the file at him. "Well?"

"Deoxyribonucleic acid is DNA, Detective…" Mewtwo frowned. "Give me a moment, please?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Brenda leaned back in her chair and folded her arms.

After three minutes, Mewtwo looked up from the file. "In a nutshell, detective, they tested the DNA sample they got from…"

"From the semen sample. Now that we all know you can't say 'semen', let's continue."

He glared, and cleared his throat. "There was a partial match to a sample already on file."

Brenda stood up so fast she whacked her hipbones on the desk. "Say what?"

"And if you cut out the scientific jargon and just paraphrase, which I imagine you want me to do, the people who did the test suspect that our rapist is the son of another rapist who was in Snowhill, twenty-seven years ago."

"How the hell do you know that last bit?" Brenda groped for her chair, and sat down.

"They found and attached a case file. I suppose they were bored. Are you going to let Sheriff Roberts know?" Mewtwo arched one eyebrow.

"First you're going to dig up those old reports, would you? Or- she'd have copies. Let's go talk to her in person." She stood up again, and chewed on her lip. "Let's go."

**End Notes**

Yes, it's updated. I know, I know, it's late. Or at least it is to my mind. However, school decided it was more important then fanfiction (and my parents and grades agreed, so I couldn't really argue) and, due to the medical jargan (and only having seen half of the episode of Criminal Minds I sort-of-not-really based this on- the crime was for TV, this is more realistic) I felt really, really awkward writing this chapter. Awkward feeling author doesn't really write as quickly as otherwise. Anyways, let me know what you think.


	8. Snowhill

**Saturday**

Brenda ducked an imaginary punch, and laid into an imaginary ribcage. There was no way her fighting style would be accepted by any martial arts, but it worked for her. Street fighting was quick and dirty, the whole point to cause the other bastard as much pain as possible. Even if the other bastard is imaginary.

She was very, very good at street fighting.

She'd called Alison. It was one of the five minute chats they had, way more often then Brenda wanted to think about. Heck, they hadn't even talked for five minutes. It'd just been:

"Hi Brenda."

"Damn caller display."

There'd been a good four minutes of silence, and then Brenda had cleared her throat.

"So you'll stay in the city, then?"

"Sure, Brenda. Talk to you later."

That'd been _it_. The sad thing was it had been enough. The sick feeling in her stomach was still there, but it was less about Alison and more about the dead girl in the woods.

"_Put your hands in the sky, put your hands in the air,_" Brenda sang, just a beat behind the CD, "_If you're the praying kind, turn this song into a prayer. Put your hands in the sky, put your hands in the air, if you're the praying kind, 'cause we're not going back there! No more! No more! No more! No more…_"

She lashed at the air with a couple of kicks, copies of some stuff she'd seen on TV. Generally, the martial arts in TV shows or movies wasn't to be attempted. Not unless you wanted a quick and easy way to hurt yourself really badly. Brenda watched martial arts tournaments and tried to figure out how the fighters managed to kick so high.

There was some stiffness in her right leg, but it was a lot better then it had been just last month. The burn scaring was pretty flexible, so long as she kept up with her stretches.

More punches, a quick elbow to what she imagined was an ear. Her hair was down- the band hadn't been tight enough- and she paused her frenzy just long enough to brush it back behind her ears.

She _hated_ her hair down.

_(Detective?)_ The CD player clicked off. Brenda kept lashing at the air with fists and feet, as if she hadn't noticed. _(Detective.)_

"What do you want, Mewtwo?" Brenda asked. She half closed her eyes and kicked backwards, nearly over balanced. Need to work on that, she told herself.

Mewtwo folded his arms, and floated down the last few steps to the basement floor. At least now he knew why there was a large open space in the middle of the room; there were boxes and some furniture piled to one side, the washer and dryer were tucked under the stairs, the water heater was in a corner, and the rest of the basement was empty. _(So, this is where you disappear to. I thought you were doing laundry.)_

"Just how domestic do you think I am?" Brenda took a deep breath, and sank into a ready stance she copied from Kung Fu. Feet parallel, legs straight, shoulders back. Fingers pinched together, almost like fists, held at her sides, just above her waist. "Mewtwo. What do you want?"

Mewtwo hesitated, and curled his tail around his feet. It had the uncomfortable tendency to twitch, at the moment. _(We've been called out to Snowhill. They found another body.)_

"Goddamn it!" Brenda threw another punch, and bared her teeth in a snarl. "Same as the other one?"

Mewtwo nodded, and followed Brenda up the stairs. _(You might want to change before we go. While I imagine your clothing is comfortable, I don't think it will be appropriate.)_

Brenda looked down at her sports bra and spandex shorts, and started swearing.

**Saturday**

"Roberts." Brenda nodded to the Sheriff. "Why don't you tell us what you found?"

Roberts pushed her sheriff's hat back off her head, and rubbed at her temples. "Some wild pokemon got at her," she said. "So it won't be pretty."

"You obviously haven't seen what a bunch of rattata can do to a body. Trust me, there are very few things that are worse." Brenda shrugged one shoulder. "Who found her?"

"My deputy, actually. He was out walking with his growlithe. He saw the body, called it in, then got good and sick on the other side of the trail."

"So long as he didn't wreck the scene," Mewtwo said. His tail started flicking from side to side. He could smell decaying flesh already, and they were just in the woods. "How old do you think the body is?"

"Can't say," Roberts said. "What with the wild pokemon nibbling at her, but they'd have stripped the bones clean if it were more then a couple of days."

"Any chance the body was already here on Thursday?" Brenda asked. She sniffed and the air and wrinkled her nose.

"I've thought of that," Roberts said. "It's possible. Thursday's body was upwind of this one."

"How do you know?" Mewtwo asked.

"I know my territory, Officer Smith. These woods are part of it. Besides that, my deputy put the wind direction down in his notes."

Brenda shared a smirk with Roberts, and stopped at the crime scene tape. "I'm not going to go any closer," she murmured. "You and Smith know the woods better then I do. I'll just stand here and watch."

Roberts nodded, and ducked under the tape. Mewtwo stepped over it, though Brenda suspected he levitated and just made people _think_ they saw his illusionary self step over it.

She shook her head, and looked back at the body. She understood murder; at its heart, murder was simple. Psychics, on the other hand, gave her a headache.

She watched as Roberts went in close to the body, as Mewtwo crouched some distance away and studied the ground. Then, because she couldn't avoid it any longer, she looked at the victim.

The girl had been left naked and sprawled on the ground. A few good sized chunks were missing from her chest, stomach, and one leg. Her hair was a dark blonde, closer to brown, and what was left of her bust was generous.

Brenda's stomach sank down to her feet. It was a bit early to start thinking this way, but if the DNA came back the way she figured it would, they had a serial rapist on their hands. One who liked Caucasian girls with dark blonde hair and large breasts.

Girls who looked a lot like Alison without the hair dye.

It was stupid and pure emotion, but it was _hard_ to look at the dead girl and not see her sister. Brenda clamped down on her response, and shoved her emotions into a mental closet. She had to focus in order to find the killer and bring him to justice, and phone-stalking Alison- which she really, really wanted to do, now that she thought of it- wasn't going to help.

"Detective Johnson?" Roberts walked over. "You okay? You look like you want to murder someone." She looked back at the body. "Of course, so do I, but you…"

"I look like I want to rip the bastard's throat out with my teeth, I know. I don't like rape cases." Brenda shoved her hands in her jeans pockets. "Do you recognize her face?"

"Yeah, I do. No need for fingerprints, though we'll check those. It's Abigail, Abigail Gallagher. Good girl, in college for a history degree." Roberts's face tightened just the slightest bit. "If you don't mind, Detective, I'll talk to her parents myself."

"To be honest, I'd appreciate it." Brenda closed her eyes as the body was finally moved into a bag, onto a stretcher, and was carried over to the trail. "No ambulance?" she asked, voice purposely light.

"Can't get down the trail," Roberts replied. "Look, I honestly don't know what you can do here. You said it yourself, you're no good in the woods."

"I'll leave you Smith, and start hunting down paperwork. I think we might have a serial rapist. And, interesting news, he's the son of another serial rapist." Brenda arched one eyebrow. "Once I've got the paperwork, I'll get us a profile."

"You do that, and then we'll lock this guy up."

Brenda inclined her head, and then headed down the trail for civilization.

**Saturday**

The equipment in the Sheriff's office was a hundred times better then the shit in Viridian. The computer hummed away, working faster then the 'new' crap Brenda normally worked with. The screen never flickered or decided to change its background color. She was able to run her search based on the DNA already gathered, and then, run a second search on the rapist's father.

Within an hour, she had as much as she was going to get. Celadon City had actually covered Snowhill twenty-seven years ago, when the first rapist was hunting. A quick phone call had netted Brenda all Celadon had on the case. She wondered, briefly, whether the perky young secretary would get in trouble for sending the files, and then put it out of her mind.

By the time Roberts and Mewtwo joined her, she had as much as she could possibly get. No doubt Mewtwo would get more- and he would, just as soon as she told him to work his magic.

"Just in time." Brenda waved a piece of paper in the air. "Look what Celadon sent me."

"What do you have?" Mewtwo reached for the stack. Brenda let him take it, merely quirking an eyebrow at Roberts.

"He reads faster," she told the sheriff. Roberts nodded and sat down. "By the way," Brenda added, "I love your equipment. It works."

It startled a laugh out of Roberts. "Why do you think I moved here? So, what do you have?"

"All the crime scene reports going back nearly three decades," Brenda said. "When our rapist's daddy was playing the field."

"And winning," Mewtwo murmured. "There wasn't even a plausible suspect."

"Right. Celadon managed to get nothing. Cold case, the detective in charge managed to get himself killed on the job." The three of them bowed their heads for a moment. "From what I gather, 'daddy' liked brunettes. Junior seems to like blondes."

Roberts was about to answer when the phone rang. She answered, and made a few grunts. Once she hung up, she swore. Brenda raised her eyebrows, not impressed at the words, but at the emotion.

"That bad, huh?"

"That was my daughter's high school. Sorry, Detective, Officer, but I have to go pick her up." Roberts pressed her lips together until they became one thin line. "I'll be back just as soon as she understands she's in _deep_ shit."

"Got it. I'll just have Smith pull us out more info then we've already got."

Roberts nodded, and left.

"Well?" Brenda asked. She got out of the chair, and waved at it. "Get to work. I've got to call Benko."

_(Benko?)_ Mewtwo asked, not bothering to disguise his telepathy.

"Our profiler." Brenda's lips twisted into a sneer. "Aaron Benko, crazier then the psychopaths he figures out."

She dialed Benko's number, and prayed for his receptionist. If she got Martha, then she could just avoid Benko that little bit longer.

"Hello, Aaron Benko speaking. Who is this?"

The fates hated her. "Benko, its Johnson. I need you-"

"You _need_ me? Darling, where are you? What do you need, massage oils? Or perhaps you'd prefer a dinner for two? I can get us reservations at-"

"-for a profile," Brenda continued, infusing steel into her words. "Nothing else, just a profile."

"Oh." Benko sounded dejected. Brenda just rolled her eyes.

"I'll be bringing the files over later today. I'll just leave them with Martha so you can look them over in the morning."

"My beloved warrioress, for you I will take them home. I should have a preliminary report for you by ten tomorrow."

Brenda swallowed a groan. "Great. Thanks. Bye." She hung up before he could say anything else, and rubbed at her forehead with one hand. "Shoot me."

_(Perhaps later, Detective. Hn.)_ Mewtwo straightened up from his customary hunch over the keyboard. _(This is interesting. Like crimes in other cities.)_

"Yeah, see, that's what you're supposed to be finding. That and anything else that might relate, like newspapers. Print it off."

Mewtwo hummed, and hunched over the keyboard again. Brenda rolled her eyes and waited by the printer. Not that she was hovering or anything.

**End Notes**

See? Told you it'd be in a month. And if I don't drive myself crazy with school, I should have the next chapter sometime before Hell freezes over too. Go me. Anyways, Benko's next chapter... He's fun. Really. Sexual harassment at its finest. (And Brenda's physical abuse at its finest, so it all works out.)


	9. Spark

**Saturday**

Brenda was _pissed._

Mewtwo had teleported to the house, pointing out that if he followed her back to the station at seven at night, people would talk. Especially since all she was doing was dropping some paperwork off. So there was that, and it was logical, and there was absolutely no reason why she should be feeling abandoned. For that matter, Mewtwo didn't even know about Benko!

The other reason she was pissed was simple: she was going to talk to Benko. If that wasn't a good reason for feeling like just killing someone, she didn't know what was.

The man was walking sexual harassment. Benko made Alison look like the most devout nun- well, okay, maybe not a devout nun, but sure as hell not like Alison usually did.

Brenda punched the elevator wall. She was at the Tower, the one place cops everywhere didn't want to go. It wasn't like that in Celadon. Back- she almost thought of it as home- there, the Tower, the central police station, whatever you wanted to call it, was just in the center of the city. It was where the cops who worked the downtown district kept their desks and their interview rooms. If IAB employed a few telepaths, it wasn't every psychic cop in the city and a few civilians.

Viridian was dirty. IAB was more interested in taking out the officers who tripped up a little and jeopardized a case then in cleaning up the dirt staining the badge.

Pity Benko wasn't dirty. If he was, she could've tossed him in a cage. They'd be short a profiler then, but it would've made her feel all good and tingly inside.

The psycho was waiting for her, just outside the elevator doors. Brenda braced herself, and clenched her teeth.

"My darling detective, how I have longed to see you again!" Benko held one hand to his nearly concave chest, and flung the other out, like he was trying to disconnect hand and arm with just the force of the motion.

She held up the file Mewtwo had prepared. There was a smaller one tucked inside, about the new rapist. The twenty-seven year old case had a larger stack of paper. "You trying to get out of your work?"

"You're my work, Brenda." Benko accepted the file, and flipped it open. "You know, if you wanted to come back to my place, I could work you over good."

She punched before she thought. Not that she ever really thought before decking someone, but around Benko, her fist had a mind of its own. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He doubled over, which was stupid, Brenda thought. She'd bloodied his nose. Her hand wasn't going anywhere below the collar bone- he'd take it as an encouragement.

Two drops of blood landed on the floor. Benko swiped at his nose, and straightened up. Blood and mucus dripped down over his lips and off his chin. Despite that, he was smiling. "I meant a massage, Brenda. What did you think I meant?"

"Just have a preliminary report for me by tomorrow. Or I swear, Benko, you'll have to breathe through a straw." Brenda turned and headed for the stairs. There was no way the exercise-allergic Benko would follow her.

"Around you, I have trouble breathing anyways!"

She flipped him the bird, right before the stairwell door closed. It wasn't the final word, but it was satisfying all the same. Since she wasn't allowed to toss him down the stairs, it was the best she could do.

**Saturday**

"Do you have some sort of computer fetish?" Brenda asked. Mewtwo was sitting at her computer again, hunched over the keyboard like some freaky gargoyle. She didn't even care if he picked that thought up; it'd been a long day, she was tired, and he was screwing with her computer. "If you break my solitaire record, you're banned from that thing."

_(You don't have a solitaire record.)_ Mewtwo straightened up, his spine making several unpleasant sounds. Brenda could hear them from the doorway. _(You do, however, have a decades out of date computer. Do you realize how slow its running speed is?)_

"So buy yourself one, you've got money." Brenda walked over to the kitchen. Imagine that, there was food in the fridge. She grabbed an apple, just because it was the least offensive fruit she could see. Better then the carrots. "Don't complain to me about it. I honestly don't care."

Mewtwo snorted. _(Even though it would make whatever you do on this thing much easier? Your disregard for technology is appalling.)_

"Whatever, fuckwit. What're you doing, anyways? Messing with the stock exchange?"

_(No. Hacking into high level Rocket databases. Would you like details?)_

"Why," Brenda asked, "are you wasting time with that? You heard the upstart bitch. Heck, you're the one who told me all about her 'grand scheme'."

Mewtwo took a deep breath and held it for five seconds. _(Detective, despite what you may believe, I wish to shut down Team Rocket in the shortest length of time possible. Foreknowledge of several of their more unsavory pastimes will help. If I know when and where they are going to attempt something like those dragon creatures, or even myself, I can stop them. The police need not get involved.)_

"Vigilantism is against the law," she pointed out. "Besides that, they'll probably have security."

_(It is doubtful, Detective, that such security could harm me.)_

"Says the guy who was scared of facing them, when Giovanni was the boss." Brenda took a bite of apple. She smiled when Mewtwo spun the chair around to stare at her. "What, didn't think I'd remember?"

_(I was not scared.)_

"Not what I remember."

_(Listen, human-)_

"I thought it was 'detective'."

Mewtwo stood up, and walked over until he was looming over Brenda. Not that she was worried. She'd fought people who'd had more then just a foot and a hundred pounds on her. The psychic tricks might cause a problem, but she'd worry about it if a fight broke out, not before hand.

_(Detective, then. Giovanni was a dangerous man who knew of my existence and prepared for the day I would attack him. Any move I took against him would potentially give him an opening to capture me. As I did not wish to become the man's slave again, I kept my distance.)_

Brenda arched one eyebrow. News to her- though what did he mean, again?

_(Furthermore,)_ Mewtwo continued, easing away from her a little. _(There are some problems that cannot be solved by the police. Vigilantism has its uses, and this would be one of those uses. Could you honestly say the police could handle a lab like what created those dragon creatures?)_

Brenda grabbed Mewtwo's paw, and pressed her barely eaten apple into it. "Yeah, I can say that honestly, because guess what? The police solved it. Goodnight. I hope you wake up with your head screwed on properly."

She made a point of slamming her bedroom door. Childish, but it was more then he could do. He was still sleeping on the couch.

**Sunday**

The Detective was quite the most _aggravating_ creature on the whole planet. If not for her rather violent demeanor, Mewtwo would have called her a girl scout, just as focused on moralities and a refusal to see the real world. He'd skimmed her mind, and found exactly what he'd expected. The cops were a force for justice in the world, all that stood between people and their own stupidity. Vigilantism was wrong, an anarchist's attack on society. Black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. A rigid, domineering view of the world.

Mewtwo continued to pace up and down the living room. There was simply no way he could get to sleep with his emotions so agitated. Short of vaporizing a few lamps, there was simply no way to calm down other then what he was doing. At least he wouldn't get dizzy. The living room was the biggest room in the house.

**You seem upset, psychic.**

Mewtwo turned his head, and narrowed his eyes. _(Rhonwen. What do you want?)_

The houndoom sat down, and dropped her jaw in a grin. **To know why you want to change your position within the pack. It is causing a disturbance.**

_(Pack?)_ he asked, too confused to be angry.

**Yes. You, me, the mistress. We are a pack. She is alpha. Why do you want to take her position now?**

_(What are you trying to get at, Rhonwen?)_ Mewtwo asked. His tail began twitching, threatening a nearby end table.

Rhonwen closed her eyes and sighed. **I did not think you would understand. You are feline. Furthermore, you are male.**

_(Rhonwen…)_ he warned.

**Fine,** the canine snapped. **You are the lowest in the pack. You cannot change your status, not as easily as you think. If you wish to be alpha, you will have to earn it. You have not. Goodnight.**

Mewtwo hissed, and teleported out of the house before he could do something he would regret. Like breaking Rhonwen's spine.

Instead, he headed into the wilderness, until he was deep enough that he wouldn't attract any attention when he tore several trees into pieces with pure telekinetic energy.

Damn the both of them, the Detective and the houndoom both.

He tore another tree from the earth, and began to rip it apart.

**Sunday**

"Did you sleep at all last night?" Brenda asked. She hadn't gotten much sleep herself; she hadn't heard the couch springs creak and groan as Mewtwo got comfortable. It wasn't an easy thought, that she'd gotten so used to his being there.

_(Of course, Detective. What is on the agenda today?)_ Mewtwo finished his orange, and tossed the peelings in the garbage. Brenda frowned as he washed his paws off in the sink.

"Have to go pick up a profile from Benko. You don't have to come if you don't want to. It's at the Tower."

_(You know, I don't believe you've ever satisfactorily explained your aversion to the Tower to me. Why is that?)_ Mewtwo shook his paws halfway dry, and arched an eye ridge at Brenda.

Her frown etched deeper lines across her forehead. "Because I don't like what the tower stands for. Here in Viridian… Look. Psychics go to the tower and don't come out. Isn't that good enough for you?"

_(Not at all, but I'll let it lie for now.)_ Brenda passed him a dishtowel. Mewtwo dropped it on the countertop without using it. _(I'm going with you to the Tower, though.)_

"Damn it," she muttered. "You just have to… damn it."

**Sunday**

The Tower was not the hellish nightmare he had expected. From everything the Detective had said- and hadn't said- he had expected to feel the weight of misery upon his shoulders the moment he stepped through the front doors. He was no empath, but he could sense the stronger emotions.

The station was blank to his mind. His shock must have shown upon his illusionary face, because the Detective grabbed his elbow and pulled him out of the flood of humanity. "Yeah," she said, "there's a lot more people here then at our station."

She eased him over to an alcove with two plastic chairs, both with cracked seats. "Look," she said, keeping her voice low. "I don't know how, exactly, you see the world. I know your telepathy or whatever plays into effect, right? Well, your telepathy is shot here. The people who work here, the powerful people, don't want anyone reading their minds."

Mewtwo shivered. He felt curiously vulnerable without the feel of other minds pressing up against his own. If he focused, he could feel the Detective's own mind, but faintly. The difference between running into a barbed wire fence and barely pressing one's palm against the spikes.

"Another thing," the Detective continued. "The video cameras here? They're real. You are going to walk where I show you to walk, stand where I tell you to stand. You are going to keep your tail very close to your feet."

Mewtwo stared down, matching the Detective stare for stare. _(Why?)_ he asked.

"Because if you do what I tell you to here, there won't be any cameras that will catch your image. Your illusion can't fool machines, Mewtwo. And you can't fool the people watching the security screens. Too many people on the ground level to focus on, right?"

He nodded. _(I'm not certain I can even edit their minds at the moment,)_ he admitted.

"You're talking telepathically to me, right? I think only the passive part of your telepathy is kicked out. You should be fine, but if not- teleport out of here."

_(And how do you know this?)_ The Detective was not normally so knowledgeable about psychic phenomenon. In fact, this was the first time he could remember that she was willing to talk about psychic abilities in a manner that wasn't condescending.

"I called Leon at like, three in the morning. If you'd been home, you would've overheard the conversation. Now come on. Benko's office is on the fifth floor." The Detective directed another level look at him, and then turned and started walking.

Mewtwo followed after, feeling oddly as if he should have been off balance but wasn't. He did as the Detective had told him, no matter how it rankled. The security cameras were obviously real at first glance. He imagined that the only part of him that would show up on the cameras would be the tip of his tail. It was difficult, keeping it curled around his feet. At least the average human wouldn't know what to make of it.

The Detective led him to a stairwell, and shoved him through. "There's a camera pointing at the doors here. They saw a blur, that's all."

_(Detective, why can't I- why do they have-)_

"It's a giant form of inhibitor." The Detective paused halfway up the first flight of stairs. "Some of this is common knowledge. Sometimes, you get a telepath witness, who might be hysterical or become hysterical. Shields go down in a cop shop, you've got murder details, rape, kidnapping- all flooding into this psychic who might already be walking a fine line, I don't know. Every station has at least one interview room that's sealed off."

_(Ah.)_ Mewtwo nodded. _(The Tower is just- the whole building is shielded. Overkill… but I understand.)_

"Yeah, well, you owe Leon. He's the one I got up at three in the morning."

Mewtwo shook his head, and floated up the stairs. The Detective jogged, tossing glares over her shoulder at him several times.

_(What is it?)_ he snapped.

"You just look incredibly lazy, flying like that. They're just _stairs_."

Mewtwo closed his eyes and hoped he had enough patience to get through the day. _(Believe it or not, my base species wasn't meant to be bipedal. If you wish to reach the fifth floor sometime this week, do not complain if I fly.)_

"Oh." The Detective seemed almost to flinch. "Sorry. Didn't know." She turned back to the stairs, and sped up her pace a little. He huffed a little to himself. He would have expected her to have problems as well, with her one leg so badly scarred. Apparently not.

"Okay. Remember, move fast through the door, but don't run." Brenda pushed open the door to the fifth floor, and Mewtwo hurried past. She followed, quickly taking the lead as they made their way down the hall. There were fewer people, and fewer cameras. Mewtwo relaxed slightly.

"Brenda!"

Mewtwo's eyes widened as the Detective actually, truly, flinched backwards. He looked ahead, and was forced to blink several times. Sadly, the person he saw was not a hallucination brought on by a lack of sleep.

The man was short, as thin as it was possible to get and not go to a hospital for malnutrition or starvation, with red hair that stood on end, as if electrified. He wore a neon green shirt patterned with pikachu and pichu, shiny blue pants that clung like a second skin, and open toed sandals.

He was waving at the Detective, and had a recognizable file under one arm. And, Mewtwo was amused to note, a rather livid bruise on his nose.

_(_This_ is our profiler?)_ Mewtwo asked.

"Yeah… Shut up. Stand there- out of camera view." The Detective pointed at a spot of floor near the wall, close enough that Mewtwo was well able to hear the conversation.

"Benko. My profile, please."

"You've got a fine one. Very fine."

The Detective closed her eyes. "No. The profile on the rapist killers. Hand it over."

"I don't know," Benko said, sighing a little. "I'd much rather study your profile."

"I suggest," Mewtwo said, tricking the human minds into thinking he spoke verbally instead of telepathically, "that you give us the report."

The profiler looked away from the Detective's chest, and up at Mewtwo. "Who are you?" he asked.

"That's Smith, my partner. Now, Benko, we're short on time. Give me the profile. Now."

Benko continued to stare up at Mewtwo. "Partner? Partner how? Like, bed partner? Because, Brenda, I tell you I'm better then anything you've ever _hurk_!"

Mewtwo arched one eye ridge. _(That was interesting,)_ he murmured, for the Detective's ears only. _(Though I'll admit, disturbing on one level.)_

"That's because you're a guy," Brenda hissed. "Guys are always disturbed when one of their own gets their balls kicked up around their throat."

He was forced to nod. However amusing it had been to see Brenda slam her knee into Benko's groin, he was forced to feel a little sympathy for the man. That had to have hurt.

"Right. Profile, one prone profiler… I think we can go." Brenda tucked the folder under one arm, and smiled. "And, Mewtwo? Can we teleport down the stairs?"

He smiled, and nodded. So, she _had_ had trouble with the stairs. He'd thought so.

**End Notes**

Okay, a few things about this chapter- as a former Girl Scout of Canada, I reserve the right to say whether they're annoying or not. I say they're annoying. And the cookies? Blech.

Mewtwo's knees. For anyone who wants to argue, I shall point you at my editor CalliopeMused, who was the one to point out that stairs, at the very least, would be a challenge for anyone with a cat's legs. Also- the super-shallow stairs in Mewtwo Returns, that Ash helps Mewtwo up. Barely had to raise their feet!

And finally- things are making for an explosion, both literally and really. Hold onto your hats, keep your arms and legs inside the vehical at all times, leave a review. I'm going to have FUN with this!


	10. Close

**Sunday**

Brenda flipped through the profiles, and grunted. "You know, Benko does manage to do one thing right."

_(What's that?)_ Mewtwo leaned back, and rubbed at his eyes. Perhaps he should have taken a break from his hacking, but several interesting things had come to light in Team Rocket's files. Still, if he didn't want to go blind, he would do best to step away for a moment. To that end, he turned the chair around so he could face the Detective.

Who was, in fact, glaring at him with a look that could curdle milk. "You weren't listening to a thing I said, were you?"

_(I was listening,)_ he protested. _(You said Benko manages to do one thing right.)_

"After that?" The Detective snorted when he didn't reply. "You're fucking obsessed. Anyways, now that you've dragged your attention away from a riveting account of Team Rocket's cost outlays-"

_(Scientific experiments, actually. They're working on humans now.)_

"See me care. As I was _saying_…" The Detective leveled another look at him, one that promised some sort of pain if he didn't keep his silence. Mewtwo dipped his chin slightly, and kept his thoughts to himself. "Benko managed a better profile on the old rapist, but there was more shit on that guy. Caucasian- most attackers go after their own racial profile, and all the girls were white- with a fetish for brown hair cut short. It was the fashion three decades ago to have your hair cut chin length or shorter, so…" The Detective shrugged. "Brown hair's the most common shade, when you're not a dye whore like Alison. Lots of selection."

_(What else?)_ Mewtwo asked, despite himself. He could have just read the reports himself, of course, but his eyes were tired and the Detective didn't seem to mind talking.

"Benko supposes the guy was impotent when not beating the shit out of a girl. Blue collar worker or lower, lived in or around Snowhill because that's where the victims were. Didn't go outside of that particular area. Victims probably didn't know him, as none of them had much in common besides appearance, location, and gender. There were seventeen dead over a five year period. Three were students in the local college, different majors, two were mothers with small brats, ten were working in various jobs, and two managed to get away alive."

The Detective looked up, and grinned at Mewtwo's widened eyes and dropped jaw. "Feel up for a road trip?" she asked.

_(When?)_

"Not today. Tomorrow. Oh, and Benko also surmises- that's a fucking idiotic word- that rapist number one is dead or in jail, or he wouldn't stop. If he'd just moved, there'd be like crimes elsewhere."

_(That makes sense. And two women got away alive- we're looking someone who got pregnant. A son.)_

"Yeah, I can connect the dots. One of them's the mother of our new killer, they both live in Snowhill. Seriously, you'd think they'd move away or something." The Detective tossed the larger file onto the couch. "For when you're done with whatever."

Mewtwo nodded, and leaned back as best as he could. His tail kept getting caught between the chair and his back, very annoying. _(And our rapist today?)_

"Probably twenty-seven, twenty-eight, Caucasian, in the same age bracket as his victims. They were all young, but not too young. Light brown, dark blonde, busty, average height." The Detective shook her head. "Not so much selection there, but there are other victims in Celadon and even here, in Viridian. Good thing you were looking, I'd never have found those reports."

It was Mewtwo's turn to grunt. That was true enough.

_(Is there anything else we can use?)_

"Only that both rapists probably tortured pokemon as children, and were probably closet bullies, no."

_(…Closet bully?)_ he asked, struggling not to sound amused.

"You know, the kid who everyone doesn't like to cross, but never does anything that'll get him into trouble?" The Detective blinked, then rolled her eyes. "Oh. Right. You never had to deal with the school shit."

For some reason that stung. _(I would have quite happily dealt with 'the school shit', Detective. Being encouraged to learn history and mathematics instead of the best way to break a creature's neck might have done me good.)_

"No, you'd have been encouraged to learn the best way to shatter a person's soul with words, or how to shoot spit balls. History and mathematics was the stuff you slept through." The Detective shrugged, and tossed the second folder onto the couch. "I'm going to make a run for food. What do you want?"

_(It doesn't matter. I'm not very hungry.)_ Mewtwo turned the chair back around, and stared at the computer screen. He heard the front door open and close, and sighed.

Spit balls and shattering souls. He had a feeling the Detective had never enjoyed school.

He would have, though. Anything would have been better then his own 'schooling'. Anything at all.

**Monday**

Violence seemed to be the answer to everything. Mewtwo readied his shields, and watched the Detective duck another punch. "I'm sorry about this," he said, directing the majority of his attention to Marisa Conner, their first interview of the day. "She didn't mean to upset your husband."

"Bri's easily upset, when it comes to this sort of thing," Marisa said, voice soft. "It's alright." She smiled, and looked over at her husband. "Brian!" she snapped, transforming in an instant, from gentle woman to irate wife. "Shut up and sit down, now!"

Brian Conner straightened up to his full six feet of height. "I don't want to," he said. "This- this _bitch_ upset you."

"The only one who's upset me right now is you, Bri." The woman transformed again, anger becoming amusement, with an undercurrent of steel beneath the words. "Now, sit down, or I'll toss you out for this interview."

"Thanks," the Detective said, once everyone had sat down. She leaned back in her chair, and laced her fingers together. "Now, Mrs. Conner, you were raped twenty-seven years ago by an unknown assailant, yes?"

Brian growled and made to stand up. Marisa grabbed his wrist with one hand, and managed to hold him down with only that, though she was perhaps half his weight. "You want to know if I got pregnant from that," she said. Her smile was rather sad.

The Detective blinked, and looked at Mewtwo. He shrugged his shoulders in response. The woman wasn't psychic, he'd know if she were.

"Uh, yes," the Detective said. "Did you?"

"I didn't. There was- but I lost the baby. Fell down the stairs. Ever had a silly little accident like that?" Marisa shook her head. "I'd thought, when I found out that I was pregnant, that the baby could be something good. You know, good from bad? Only then I lost my baby, and became depressed, or more depressed, anyways. I moved back in with my mom, which is how I met Brian. I suppose that was my good, though it took me five years to recognize it."

The Detective shook her head once they were outside, and out of hearing. "Time to go to lady number two. She must have the son."

_(I feel rather sorry for Mrs. Conner,)_ Mewtwo said, somewhat surprised to find it was the truth. _(She actually wanted that baby, and she lost it.)_

"Don't feel sorry for her," the Detective said. "That's the worst thing you can do to her."

_(What?)_ Mewtwo turned his head, and stared down at the Detective, who shook her head.

"Look. Marisa Conner, she's tough. You can see it. She's got a husband, she's got a good house, and she's got her life." The Detective's black eyes glinted with what Mewtwo supposed was admiration. "Admire Marisa Conner, respect her, but don't waste diminish her with pity. Besides, if you were to tell her you felt sorry for her, that brick of a husband would beat your face into pulp."

Mewtwo snorted, but nodded. _(I suppose. Where to now?)_

"Farm. Roberts gave me the directions. You can read them off." The Detective dug a piece of paper out of her pocket, and handed it over. "We're going to talk to a Lucinda Irving. I bet if our first interviewee was a sane, rational woman, Lucinda's going to be a nutcase."

**Monday**

Brenda turned the car up onto what looked like another country lane. "You're sure this is it?" she asked, clutching the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles turned a sickly taupe. 'White-knuckled grip' was a phrase that didn't apply, when your skin was as dark as hers. "Where's the house?"

_(Behind the trees, perhaps?)_ Mewtwo pointed out, with that same impatient undercurrent she was starting to expect, now. Like everything they did was just a delay, keeping him from his hacking. Sure, they had to be taken down and out, but did he have to spend every free moment on the computer?

Not that it mattered. The farmhouse had just come into view, sitting next to a barn that looked like all it was just waiting for the worst moment to collapse. There were _holes_ in the walls. What was holding up the barn, anyways, spit and prayers?

She parked in a cleared space, beside a broken down car with only one wheel, held up on jacks. If that wasn't where one was supposed to put a car, tough. She'd be leaving soon.

Mewtwo slid his gaze in her direction. _(Penny for your thoughts?)_

"I don't need the money." Brenda pulled her badge out of her back pocket, and hooked it on her belt. Then, ready, she got out of the car and marched over to the front door. She was aware of Mewtwo right behind her, a little to one side.

She knocked on the door, instead of pounding. Lucinda Irving wasn't a suspect to be dragged from her home. A few polite questions, no yelling, no suspicions.

Parents weren't always to blame for their lunatic children.

Lucinda opened the door, and noted Mewtwo's uniform right off. She flinched backwards, and pressed one fist to her chest. "Can I help you, officers?"

"We'd like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Irving, if that's alright. Your name has come up in relation to a case." Brenda shoved her hands in her pockets, and dipped her chin. "If that's alright."

"I- I suppose so. If you don't mind a mess." Lucinda stepped back, her eyes very wide as the two cops stepped into her home. Brenda did her best to keep her body language unthreatening, but knew she was doing a poor job of it. Unthreatening just wasn't part of her. Mewtwo did a much better job, but then, he had that illusion.

"Sit down, please. I- do you want anything to drink?"

"Thank you, but no. Please, Mrs. Irving, we'd like to ask our questions now." Brenda mentally took her impatience and sat on it. Mewtwo shot her a startled look, which made her wonder a little what he'd just sensed.

Lucinda sat down on the very edge of the couch seat, hands clasped in her lap and practically vibrating, she was shaking so hard. She was a frail woman, Brenda decided, mentally and physically.

"Mrs. Irving, are those pictures of your son?" Mewtwo asked, pointing at photographs pinned to the wall. They were without frames, skewered with pushpins. They were all of a young man, with dark brown hair, in a variety of poses and places.

"Oh, yes. My son, Bobby. Robert. He's a good boy, a very good boy." Lucinda sounded almost pleading, and wrung her hands together. "He's in college, going to be in college. An architect."

Brenda narrowed her eyes. "And where is he now?" she asked.

"Is Bobby in trouble?" Lucinda shook her head. "He's a good boy. Wouldn't hurt anything, not anything."

"Bobby's not in trouble," Brenda said, throttling her desire to browbeat the woman into telling them something, anything useful. "He's just come up in relation to one of our investigations, in Viridian."

"In Viridian?" the woman seemed to relax, most of the worry clearing from her face. "Oh. What sort of worry? He's not here, you see. He's- I don't know where he is. He'll be home soon, though." She managed to work up a smile. "How about I call you when he gets home. What are you looking for him for, again?"

"It's just a small matter. He witnessed a hit and run a few days earlier, and we're looking to ask him a few follow up questions," Brenda lied. "Here's my card. Call me when your son gets home, please."

"Of course, of course." Lucinda pocketed the card. "Bobby will be happy to talk to you, he's such a good boy. Likes helping people."

"I'm sure he does." Brenda stood up, and brushed at her jeans. "Thanks for your time, Mrs. Irving."

"You're welcome. Have a good day."

Brenda nodded, and smiled until the front door was closed. Then she scowled, and muttered a curse. "Now we have to go looking for him," she muttered. "Just great."

_(At least we have a name,)_ Mewtwo pointed out. _(We can talk to Sheriff Roberts, who'll probably know where to find him.)_

Brenda just nodded, and got into the car. It still didn't feel like enough.

**Monday**

"Roberts, it's Johnson. Thought I'd update you on the situation." Brenda juggled her cell phone and her driving. The country roads were tricky, and barely wide enough for two cars to drive next to each other. Fortunately, there weren't any other vehicles on the road that she could see. Not that it was saying much, since there were too many damn twists and turns.

"_Alright, what've you got?"_

"A name. Robert Irving, goes by Bobby. You know of him?"

"_No, but one of my deputies probably does. I'll check. Then, I'll start hunting for him. You worry about your district for now, Johnson. You're a city girl, no offence."_

"None taken," Brenda said, amused. "I'm quite happy to leave the hunt to you. I've got court dates, after all."

"_Well, you have fun with those. I'll call you if anything comes up,"_ Roberts assured.

"Right. Bye, then." Brenda hung up the phone, and dropped it between the seats. She glanced at Mewtwo. "Looks like you've got some time to go back to your hacking."

_(So it would seem.)_ Mewtwo's eyes narrowed, and he stared out the car window. _(You don't mind?)_

"Cameras in court, remember?" Brenda said. Did she mind what, his hacking, or his having the time to hack? Specifics would have been nice, though she wouldn't have had a good answer.

**End Notes**

To be honest, not much to say, other then expect explosions in the future. Drop me a line, tell me what you think, have a good day.


	11. Explosion

**Tuesday**

Brenda tossed her jacket onto the passenger seat, and slammed her door closed. It popped back open. It took her two more tries just to get it to stay shut, and even then, she was sure one good pothole would send it flying open. She kept one hand on the handle, just in case her prediction came true.

She had some time, between the court date for Linda Petker, boyfriend killer, and Ilya Ivanovitch, drug head and best friend slayer.

Just enough time to visit Children's Services.

The drive was hectic, since she couldn't exactly free her one hand to hit her signal. It made for some interesting moments, anyways. The other drivers probably thought she was drunk.

Children's Services was housed in a large, semi-rundown building. Graffiti was sprayed on the corners, but not near the door or on the stairs. Probably because the building was actually open all night, with a skeleton staff, in case of emergencies. It hadn't always been like that, Brenda remembered. It'd changed sometime when she was, what, five? Six?

It was a good thing for her it had changed. Brenda rubbed at her arm and kicked the car door closed behind her. Wonder of wonders, it stayed closed.

The inside of the building was just like every other Children's Services building that had been built. The floor was some sort of pale gray-green laminate, and peeling wallpaper faded into obscurity. There were pictures of happy children on the wall, some of the photos looking a little battered. That damned tradition- the adoption wall. Fucking idiots who thought it was a good idea should've drowned themselves in the sewers before implementing it.

Brenda scanned the photos without really seeing them, and then stopped dead. She looked closer, and frowned.

Two pictures, both of bad quality. One was of a little girl, three years old, dark coffee-with-cream skin, black hair, grinning like she was on a drug high. You couldn't see the eyes because of the blur. There was a name at the bottom, not that Brenda needed to read it.

_Brenda Abandonato, age 3, March 2, 2089._

The other picture was, barely, of better quality. It showed a young girl, seven years old, her summer-dark skin mottled by darker bruises, black hair almost as short as a Marine's, and a white cast on one arm. There was no smile on the child's face, but a glare that was made somehow worse from the camera having turned her eyes red. Brenda glanced at the name, and sighed.

_Brenda Johnson, age 7, January 19, 2093._

"You'd think they'd have taken the pictures down by now," she muttered, and headed for the front office.

The office waiting room was empty, even of kids. Brenda arched one eyebrow, and sat down in one of the broken chairs. A sharp piece of plastic jabbed her in her back, but she ignored it as best as she could.

She'd been cooling her heels maybe ten minutes when the door opposite her opened. A young boy, dressed to the nines in street punk wear, right down to spiked bracelets and a dog collar, slouched out. Brenda eyed him, and decided he didn't have any weapons other then the spikes on his wrists. He eyed her, too, but didn't mark her as a cop. Probably thought all police officers wore uniforms. Made her glad she was a detective and could wear plainclothes.

A washed out looking social worker stepped into the waiting room, and looked right at Brenda. He was too young for Brenda to have known him, but then, Brenda hadn't expected anyone with more then five years on the job. Children's Services tended to have high turnover, worse then any other job, just about.

"Can I help you, Miss…?" the social worker asked, sounding as if he didn't want to help, but couldn't get around it.

"Johnson. Detective. I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time." Brenda stood up, and glanced over at the street punk. "You. Scram."

The kid scrammed.

"You shouldn't have done that," the social worker said. Whined it, really, at a pitch that made Brenda want to plug her ears and whimper.

"He was going to leave anyways, and this is confidential." She didn't wait any longer for an invitation, but walked into what had to be the social worker's office. It was a small closet of a room, with only one visitor's chair, a crappy computer that looked even worse then Brenda's work terminal, and a lack of anything personal. "Do you have a name?"

"Lee," the man snapped. "What do you want, Detective? I have an appointment in only a few minutes."

"I'm looking for someone born in Snowhill, maybe twenty-seven, twenty-eight years ago. To a Marisa Conner."

Lee looked startled. "Why?" he asked.

"It applies to a case of mine. I don't know what the baby's gender is, when it was born, or even _if_ it was born. Can you find that out for me?"

"Why are you coming to Children's Services? Surely the hospital would have records."

Brenda leaned against the wall, and frowned. "Look, I know how Children's Services work. Yeah, I could check with the hospital, but you'd put a block on the kid's records. I'd get nothing- no adoption records, no placement records- and I do need information. You can get it for me without breaking the law."

"You'll need a warrant," Lee said.

"Then I'll get one." Brenda pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket. "But I was hoping we could do this in a friendly manner."

"Get that warrant, and then we'll talk friendly."

Brenda shrugged, and left. As she walked, she flipped open the phone and started dialing Mara-anni's number. There was really no reason to doubt Marisa Conner's statement that she'd lost her baby, but it was better to be anal and check out the details.

Besides, what was the point of having a pet lawyer if you didn't use her every so often?

**Thursday**

Brenda scowled at the shirt, holding it between thumb and forefinger. "I know I should've done laundry," she muttered.

She had one clean shirt. It was a blouse, it was white, and normally she saved it for court dates for when she had to look respectable and wear a jacket. She looked from her shirt, to the pile of dirty laundry, and winced. There was nothing she could wear, unless she really didn't mind tomato sauce stains across half her chest, or worse, blood splatter.

She sighed, and shrugged into the shirt. She'd just have to avoid getting into any fights.

Brenda slid her belt through the belt loops, and attached her gun sheath to it. Thus armed, she headed out of her room in search of breakfast.

Mewtwo was asleep, in what had to be an uncomfortable position. His tail was folded up under his back, and his upper body was in danger of sliding off the couch entirely. She considered waking him up, if only so he could get in a more comfortable position, and snorted. He wouldn't appreciate it if she did that, so she wouldn't.

The only food in the house was some of Mewtwo's fruit, and a box of granola bars. There were other things too, but they all needed to be cooked. Besides, Brenda wasn't in the mood for pork chops for breakfast.

She chose an apple. The granola bars were probably stale, and tasted bad no matter what.

_(What are you doing?)_ Mewtwo's mind voice was fuzzy sounding, which was very weird. It made Brenda feel like there was a bunch of cotton stuffed in her ears.

"Eating breakfast. What are you doing?" She took another bite of her apple.

Mewtwo sat up on the couch, wincing a little as his tail moved. _(But… that's my food.)_

"Are you getting possessive over an apple?"

_(Not at all.)_ He turned his head, stretching out his second neck, Brenda thought. _(I'm merely curious if you're going to leave me anything to eat.)_

She scowled. "Of course I am. Unlike you, I don't eat my own weight in fruit."

_(I do not do that!)_

"Whatever. Hurry up and eat something, we're going."

**Thursday**

Brenda growled at the plant on her desk, and then at her ringing phone.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" Mewtwo asked, turning around at his desk.

"If it's important, they'll leave a message."

_(Answer the phone, Detective,)_ he hissed, for her mind only. Brenda looked up and met his eyes, frowning. What bug had crawled up his ass and died?

"Fine," she muttered, and picked up the phone. "What do you want?" she snapped.

"_This is Detective Johnson?"_

"Yeah."

"_My name is Wolfe Sahoma. I'm a deputy posted at Snowhill."_

"Alright, deputy, what do you want?" Brenda drummed her fingers against her desk.

"…_Sheriff Roberts thinks you're going to want to come here, detective. It's about Lucinda Irving."_

Brenda hissed out a breath. "I'll be there in half an hour." She hung up without saying goodbye, and looked over at Mewtwo. "Come on."

"Detective, we have our meeting with Lieutenant Davis in an hour."

Brenda narrowed her eyes. "Are you saying, officer, that you are of the opinion that a meeting is more important then an ongoing murder case?"

All talk around their desks stopped. At least one officer stepped back.

_(I never said that.)_ Mewtwo stood up. Brenda didn't know about the other police officers, but for her, the illusion fell. It was an irritated pokemon standing by the desk, not an officer in uniform. Mewtwo's tail lashed, nearly taking out the computer.

"The hell you didn't," she snapped. "You can stay here and waste your time picking away at a bunch of spineless cowards. I'm going to go stop a mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch."

She didn't wait for him to answer. She didn't take the elevator down to the garage because she needed to move. That and the stairwell had a door she could slam.

**Thursday**

Brenda parked in front of the Irving farm, and glanced at the deputy. "Where is everyone?" There were three police cruisers and one blue two door car parked in front of the barn, but no people.

"We have people searching in the woods," he said, which didn't answer her question. "Sheriff Roberts is waiting for you in the kitchen."

Brenda got out, and sighed. "Don't bother closing your door," she said. "It won't latch." Why she had to get saddled with a piece of crap for a car, she didn't know. When she found out, heads would roll.

The deputy, she noticed, headed for the trees. She watched him for a moment, before heading to the house.

"You'd better have answers, Roberts," she said, once she was in the kitchen.

"Well, you'd better sit down." Roberts was already sitting herself. "Because Lucinda Irving is dead. Bobby came home."

Brenda felt her knees give out. "Home? When?"

"Sometime between midnight and ten this morning, when we found the body. She was stabbed to death."

"And you know it was Bobby how?"

"That's his car in the yard."

Brenda looked out at where the blue two-door was, ignoring such pesky details like solid walls in the way. "Anything else?"

Roberts's smile was grim. "Who else could it be? The door wasn't forced, the car keys were on the table, there are two plates in the sink right now, waiting to be washed."

"So he came home, ate dinner, then killed his mother?" Brenda shook her head. "She must have said something to set him off. I was by on Monday, gave her my card, lied about the reason I wanted to talk to him. If she mentioned it, he'd know something was up."

Roberts nodded. "Look, we think he might be in the woods. We've got some growlithe coming, but every able body is currently out searching for him. Do you think you can take the fields?"

Brenda decided not to be insulted. She didn't know the woods, she couldn't count the number of times she'd mentioned it to Roberts. Besides that, she was good with woods only when there was a path to follow. In the fields, however, there would be no getting lost, not so long as she could see the farmhouse.

"Are there any pokemon in the fields?" she asked.

"Only wild ones."

"Then sure, I'll do it."

**Thursday**

Mewtwo wished his was a species with claws. It would have been so satisfying to slash something to pieces. Granted, it would have been difficult to explain how his desk had falling to pieces, but it would have been satisfying while it lasted.

He growled to himself, the first time he had ever done so, and headed for the conference room. He would be early to the meeting, not that it mattered.

The conference room door was already open. Mewtwo narrowed his eyes at Lieutenant Davis, though she didn't deserve it. "Good afternoon, Lieutenant. You're here early."

"Always here early, Smith," Davis said. "Give me a hand with the wireless? Your station's signal and my laptop don't get along."

He went very still for a moment, before giving one stiff nod. "Of course. If you'll just move to the side? This should only take a moment."

"Sure, thanks," Davis said. "I could muddle through it on my own, but I never claimed to be an expert with electronics." She took two binders from a messenger bag. "I'm happier working with paper, but technology comes with the badge."

The problem with the wireless was remedied with a few clicks of the mouse. "That should work, so long as you don't expect any speed from it."

"It works, that's enough for me," she said. "I'm in no rush." Davis pointedly tapped the black binder. "This is what I've found on Rocket. The green is your research, Campbell's soup version." The green binder was easily four times thicker. "If there's ever time we're not talking shop, I'd love a few pointers on how you found all of this."

"It's not terribly legal," he pointed out, and then wondered if he should have done that. Not that it mattered. He sat down and tried to look confidant.

Davis fixed him with a long look. "You know what? Fine. Rocket's not legal, you're not legal, but that means none of your findings can come up in court. Some lucky Rocket grunt would walk free out of the courtroom if the evidence is seized illegally. You find a legal way to replicate this... we'll talk."

"A simple matter, I'm sure," he said. "For most of it, it's a simple matter of cross-referencing from the legal files."

"Simple matter, Smith? I wasn't born yesterday, don't treat me like I was. You have very intimate details about precisely what Rocket is researching, and who has been involved in their biggest labs."

Several deep breaths kept his temper under control. Obviously he had been spending too much time around the Detective, if he was going to blow up at anything. "I have been watching them for some time, Lieutenant."

"I'd guess so, if your first damn case was with Rocket. Giovanni died, Smith, and there's no official report on how or why." Her eyes were hard. "I don't know what you're up to, but you know too much for me to accept that you're a genius with cross-referencing what any Joe Public could find."

"It doesn't really matter what you believe, does it? So long as you get results."

"Ends justifying means?"

"If you like."

"I don't like, Smith. I don't wear the badge because it's shiny, I don't hate cockroaches because they leave a mess when they finally get stepped on. If you can't bring down Rocket through police means, you're a vigilante. I don't work with vigilantes." Carmen Davis closed her laptop with an audible click. "Care to explain why there's no record of you before the Rocket case, Smith? No Vahan Smith has graduated from any police trading academy in the past ten years. No transfer records, no hiring papers, no address on file with payroll."

Indeed, it would have been very satisfying to have claws. He had to settle with a glare that glowed in the dark. "Perhaps," he murmured, "you're going to mention how generic my last name is, next. I am doing this, Lieutenant, because I wish to see Team Rocket ended."

"I don't give a fuck about your last name. I care that in the official records, you don't exist. You just collect your biweekly salary, obsess about Rocket, and know more than someone who's spent years on the gang beat." Davis stood, giving herself more room to maneuver. What had happened to her eager partner in the slow approach? "My name is off this investigation, Smith, and I'll get Johnson off as well. If Rocket catches wind and wants a target, you're welcome to them."

He stood up as well. "You can't do that."

"Take my name off the investigation? Easily, because we're after completely different goals. If Johnson wants her name besides yours, then it's her decision." She slid her laptop and the two binders back into her bag. "You're a liability, Smith, or whatever the hell your name is. Biggest damn chip in your shoulder I've seen."

He clenched his teeth. "Lieutenant," he began, and then stopped. There was nothing he could say that wouldn't end in something breaking. "Very well." He let his eyes glow blue, before teleporting from the room.

Davis grabbed onto the back of a chair reflexively. He'd just...

"Fuck," she said to the empty room.

**Thursday**

Brenda knelt down by some torn up ground, and tried to figure out if it were from wild pokemon doing… whatever it was wild pokemon did, or from something else.

She stood up. She didn't know. She would avoid the spot, in case it was important, and put a flag nearby so it could be found again. To that end, she shrugged off her jacket and draped it over a nearby fence post. Despite herself, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was to warm to be comfortable in a jacket.

For just a moment, she stared at the woods. Bobby Irving was probably somewhere in there. There just weren't very many places you could go in the country, without a car.

She started to turn away, and paused. There was yellow where there shouldn't have been any yellow. She looked back, and felt her back muscles tense. A yellow hair ribbon was tangled around a tree branch.

She might not have known much about the woods, but she did know one thing. Hair ribbons didn't grow on trees.

Brenda hopped the fence, and hesitated. She wasn't really leaving the fields. If there was something like a trail, she'd go back to the farm house and wait for one of the deputies, or even the sheriff.

Except- there were scuff marks, and broken branches. It was practically a paint trail. It couldn't hurt to follow it just a little ways in. She could always follow it right back out.

There was a slight cliff, just enough that Brenda had to flex her knees on jumping down. Her bad leg gave a twinge, but it always did that, so she wasn't worried. And getting up wouldn't be hard, either. It was what, three feet high? A really big step, no problem.

Up ahead, someone started to scream, but was cut off.

Brenda started running.

She didn't follow the trail, because the screaming had come from the side. Branches tore at her face and arms, and several times she had to pull free of trailing creepers that wrapped around her ankles. Whoever was up ahead was surely able to hear her crashing through the woods.

She had to stop. There was no way she'd be able to find anyone if she kept running around blindly.

At first her heartbeat was very loud in her ears, her breathing almost just as loud, but both quieted down after a few moments. Like that, she was able to hear someone else moving through the trees and underbrush, just as loudly as she had.

_No running_, she thought, and began to walk towards the noise. She still broke branches and got tangled in creepers, but it was quieter then her headlong dash into the forest.

She saw a glimpse of bright yellow and green ahead, and quickened her pace. She was moving faster then whoever it was. She hoped it was Bobby. If it wasn't, she hoped it was someone who knew how to get back to the Irving farmhouse.

There were two people. One of them looked enough like the late Lucinda Irving that he had to be Bobby. The other girl looked like Alison without the hair dye. Bobby had the girl by the arm, and was pulling her along.

"Robert Irving!" Brenda stepped out into view. "Let her go."

Bobby turned his head, and grinned. He lifted his free hand, and showed her the knife. "Don't come any closer," he said. "I'll kill her if you do."

"Then you'll be short a hostage," Brenda said. She barely kept from snarling. She really, badly, wanted to pound this psycho's face into pulp. His eyes weren't sane.

The girl in his arms was whimpering, face wet with tears. Brenda glanced at her once, and then looked away.

"Let her go, Bobby," she growled.

"Oh no. I don't know who you are, lady, but me and Claris got some things to talk about."

There was no help for it. Bobby had pulled Claris in front of him, knife to her throat. There was no time to talk him down, there was no way she was going to risk shooting at him and hitting the civilian.

Brenda leapt for Bobby, reaching for the knife. She managed to grab his wrist and pull it towards her before he could slit Claris's throat. With her other hand, she shoved Claris to the side.

Bobby stumbled, and tried to punch Brenda in the head with his free hand. She blocked, and brought her knee up towards his groin. He managed to turn partway, so she hit his thigh instead.

"Let go!" he grunted, twisting away from her. Brenda kept hold of his wrist, dug her nails in. He had to let go of the knife.

She blocked another punch, and threw one of her own. Her knuckles smarted from hitting his breastbone. Bobby stumbled back, and nearly fell. All that held him up was Brenda's grip on his wrist- so she let go.

She thought he'd be winded on landing. At the very least she thought he'd let go of the knife. He wasn't and he didn't. He was up on his feet almost at once, and swiped at her with the knife.

She lifted one arm, shielding her face, and hissed. First blood went to Bobby then.

"You're not to my taste," he hissed, pointing the knife at her. "But I suppose you'll do."

"Doubt it," Brenda said, and kicked him in the gut. Bobby doubled over, wheezing, and dropped the knife. She stepped forward and landed a right hook on his jaw. Bobby twitched, then fell over, limp.

Just in case, Brenda checked his pulse. It was good and strong. And if his lawyer, whoever the poor sap would be, claimed police brutality, well, Brenda would be getting a picture of the slice on her arm. It was bleeding bad enough that the sleeve on her whole lower arm was red and clammy.

"You, Claris. You alright?" Brenda didn't turn her head.

"Yeah… I'm fine. You…?"

"I'll live. Do you know the way to Snowhill from here, or a farm?"

"No. I don't."

Brenda pulled her gun, and pointed it at the sky. "Alright then. Plug your ears."

She pulled the trigger.

**Thursday**

Shoot a gun in the forest, and people come running. Brenda rubbed at her arm, not entirely comfortable with the bandages. It was a tiny cut. Bled badly, yeah, but it wouldn't even scar.

Base of operations had been moved, temporarily, to the Irving house. She'd only just managed to escape a Sheriff Richards armed with a thermometer. She didn't need her fucking temperature taken, it was a cut. Not an illness.

She glanced over at her car, expecting to see the doors still open. She wasn't expecting to see Mewtwo, his illusion flickering every other second, eyes glowing blue.

Fury crept up on her, shortening her breath, turning her deaf to anything but the pounding of her heart. Her vision tunneled, the edges turning a dark, blood red. Not for the first time in her life, she wished she were a creature out of legend, like a demon or vengeful spirit. It would have been nice to have something other then her feeble human strength and words to vent her rage.

"Mewtwo," she murmured, knowing he'd be able to hear her whisper.

_(Detective.)_

She started to walk over, her hands curling into claws, and then fists. She wanted to hurt him.

She was close enough to touch him now. His illusion was flickering even worse, a sign that he was either nervous or distracted.

_Or angry,_ a little voice whispered in the back of her mind. Brenda ignored it.

Instead, she punched him in the stomach.

It _hurt_. Brenda pulled back, cradling her sore hand against her side. That had been singularly brilliant- like punching a tree trunk, and he didn't seem to have felt it.

"You asshole," she spat. "You fucking moron! What are you doing here? Don't you have a _meeting_ to go to?"

_(Detective, you will be silent,)_ he hissed.

"I fucking hell will not! The hell good are you for, huh? Look, damn you!" Brenda held up her arm, displaying the stained sleeve. "He nearly got another one! He nearly killed her! Because you and your obsession- you son-uva-bitch! Just because you don't care about humans-"

_(Don't,)_ Mewtwo warned. _(You have _no_ idea, human-)_

Brenda tried to slap him. He caught her wrist in one paw, and tightened his grip until she was sure to bruise.

_(You will be silent,)_ he said, very quietly, for her mind alone.

"Like hell," she snarled, nearly as quietly. "I don't take orders from an obsessive fuck up like you, Mewtwo. Get out of my sight. Go lurk in the shadows. It's where you belong."

Something hard and shiny was shoved into her hand, at the same time a loud _roar_ filled her mind. She staggered, not quite falling, eyes watering from the pain.

_(As my options seem to be work on my own, or work with a psychotic HUMAN with a knife fetish, I will destroy Team Rocket WITHOUT help. I QUIT!)_

There was a flash of blue, and then he was gone. Brenda took a deep breath, and sagged against her car's hood. That- what was that? She looked down at the thing in her hand, and felt her breath catch in her throat.

He'd given her a badge. Brenda flipped it open, doing her best to ignore the ringing in her ears.

He'd given her his badge, the one she'd gotten for him, because his illusion version sucked.

"Good," she growled. About time he got out of her life. Damn asshole.

She froze, halfway through turning her key in the ignition, when she realized- he was gone. He wouldn't be sleeping on her couch, or on the bed she'd bought for him. He was _gone_.

And it felt like someone had flipped the world upside down a couple times, or there was a hole in the bottom of her stomach, or- something.

"Good riddance," she muttered, not quite able to believe it.

**End Notes**

And now, most loyal readers, I must leave you for, meh, three months? In other words, my editor is going away for the summer, and until she comes back, this story is on Haitus. See you in the fall!


	12. Simmer

**One Week Later  
****Friday**

Plants were, to Brenda's mind, evidence of how fucked up the world really was. For instance, take the damn thing that happened to be sitting on the corner of her desk. It was small, leafy, and green. If it just stayed small, leafy, and green, she could probably grow to deal with it. Probably. So long as someone else took care of the fucking waste of desk space.

But no, of course it couldn't work like that. The waste of space, also known as the damn houseplant Mewtwo- the fucking idiot- had gotten her, happened to be growing flower buds. _Flower buds_. Which, given enough time, turned into _flowers_.

In a few days there'd be a bunch of fucking flowers on her fucking desk!

She growled, and tapped one finger against her keyboard. An error message came up on her computer screen, but she ignored it in favor of giving the damn plant a death glare.

The plant didn't oblige her by bursting into flames. It continued to look obnoxious and cheerful and- damn it all to Hell anyways.

She turned her attention back to her computer screen- and snarled, this time with the overtones of a scream. "What the fuck do you mean, cannot comply? Look, you fucking bastard, you'd better comply or so help me…" She raised one fist, ready to beat the computer into submission if she had to.

"Sir! Detective!" One of the officers jumped forward, and landed beside the desk in a very awkward position. One leg was way forwards, like he was stretching out his hamstrings, while the other was folded like he was kneeling, with his foot twisted to the side. He held onto the edge of her desk with both hands, and grinned when she turned to look at him.

"What?"

"Ah, I'll fix that for you, sir. Uhm. Where's Smith? Normally he takes care of misbehaving electronics."

"'Misbehaving electronics'?" Brenda quoted. "What the fuck'd you do, take a manners course? He's gone." She bared her teeth in a feral expression, and decided lying was really the best policy. No need for the gossip chain to learn Vahan, Officer Smith was really Mewtwo, the biggest screw up psychic pokemon that ever existed. "Sick grandma, Lavender Town, he's the only family, paperwork, blah blah blah."

The officer nodded. "Uhm. Yes sir. I'll need your chair. To fix your computer, I mean."

Brenda stood up, and gestured with one hand. "By all means, officer. You do that." She stalked around, and headed for the coffee station. At least three people- two fellow cops and one halfway intelligent civilian- scrambled to get out of her way.

The coffee pot was empty.

Brenda stared at the pot, and took a deep breath. Then another. She could smell the coffee, burnt grinds charred onto the glass of the pot, and the almost bitter scent of too many grinds, not enough hot water.

She wanted a damn cup of coffee. Was that too much to ask?

She growled, picked the pot up, and flung it at the far wall.

It shattered right next to Captain Dallas's face.

In an instant, Brenda's fury transmuted into dread.

Dallas's nostrils flared as he took a deep breath, and turned his head to look at her. "Detective Johnson," he said, apparently ignoring the single cut on his cheek that was starting to drip blood. "Could I see you in my office? Now."

Brenda hunched her shoulders, and ducked her head. "Yes, sir."

"Good." Dallas swiped at the blood on his cheek, and turned on his heel. Brenda slunk after him.

**Friday**

"So."

"So."

Zachary Linden stared at the door, as if expecting… well, he didn't know what he was expecting, but the past minute, maybe two, had blown everything he knew about Detective Johnson so far out of water, it was in orbit.

Sure, she had a temper, anyone could tell that. You didn't walk around like you wanted to gut someone just because you thought it was fun. But, picking up an empty coffee pot and chucking it at a wall, that was something else.

"Would it have killed her to put a new pot on?" he found himself asking.

Sergeant Wilkinson and Officer Turnbull turned to look at him. "No way," Wilkinson said. "She'd have broken the machine, not just the pot."

"She's real angry," Turnbull said, stating the obvious. "Must be 'cause Smith's away."

"He's got a sick grandmother," Zachary said, feeling almost as if he had to defend the absent Smith. Probably did, he thought. Give the vultures five minutes and they'd have Smith to blame for everything from Johnson's temper to global warming, just because he had to go take care of his only family member. "Besides, her computer's down again. Maybe the coffee was just the straw that broke the camerupt's back?"

"You new here?" Wilkinson asked.

"Yes, sir. Just out of the one-twenty-eight. Abbot's my trainer, sir."

Turnbull and Wilkinson nodded. "Stiff scoop," Turnbull said. "Homicide's different, kid. No homeless here."

"The occasional one," Wilkinson corrected. "But generally they're pretty obviously murdered. They're not being scooped because they got too cold or not enough food or a bad bottle of rotgut."

"I know," Zachary said. "But-"

Turnbull raised one finger. Zachary frowned at the older cops. It seemed they were taking it in turns to give him the lecture.

"But you should know this," Turnbull said. "Johnson? You want to stay away from her. She's a loose cannon with a badge. Smith's a good man, keeps her on a leash without her knowing. With him gone, though, she's back to being a rabid pokemon."

"And you know what happens to rabid pokemon," Wilkinson said.

Zachary didn't answer. It was too tempting to say that Turnbull had gone from cannons to rabid pokemon and that he should really choose one metaphor and stick with it.

When Zachary didn't answer, Turnbull did, as if it had been completely planned. "They're put down. Or in Johnson's case, get kicked out."

"Stay away so she doesn't take you with her," Wilkinson said, and headed off for his own desk. After a moment, Turnbull left too.

With nothing better to do, Zachary turned back to Johnson's computer. He wasn't an e-geek like Smith seemed to be, but he knew his way around a simple error message. And as long as Detective Abbot didn't call him back, he'd just set things to rights for when Johnson got back.

Wilkinson and Turnbull were wrong. Johnson wasn't a rabid pokemon. Zachary had grown up on a farm, and knew the difference between a rabid pokemon, and a wild one. Maybe if people stopped acting like they expected Johnson to bite, she'd calm down a little.

You never knew, Zachary mused to himself, and continued tapping away at the keyboard. You just never knew.

**Friday**

Mewtwo took a deep breath, and curled his tail around his paws.

He was feeling decidedly _animal_ at the moment, with his rage beating a red tattoo at the back of his eyes. He knew, without having to see it, that his psychic aura would be a burning red instead of his normal, calm blue. Further, he would doubtless destroy everything in a five foot radius if he attempted to utilize his psychic abilities.

He needed to calm down, control his emotions, and not allow himself to be ruled by them.

Intellect ruled his psychic abilities. Telepathy, telekinesis, manipulation of psychic energy, all could be destructive if emotions got a hold on the mind. Only empaths, the weakest and least effective of all psychics, could work- indeed, had to work- while their emotions ran rampant. Empathy was one of the few skills Mewtwo couldn't claim, which was decidedly a relief.

Empathy, and the elemental kinesis abilities. Mew's abilities, but not his. One more separation between the original and the clone.

_Good._

Mewtwo snarled, his face twisting with his rage. This was _not_ helping. Thinking of Mew only made him want to hit something with his fists, which was not an appropriate response. He had to be calm, in control.

A mental version of the Detective arched an eyebrow, and snorted. _Right,_ she seemed to say, _because control's so fucking great. Keep it up, and maybe you'll explode from all that anger. Oh, wait, you already did._

_(Shut up,)_ he said, and the imaginary Detective disappeared.

He turned his attention to a pebble, barely big enough for him to pick up, what with his oddly shaped fingers. Not that he needed his mostly useless paws to lift objects.

…He'd been right. His psychic aura was dark red, and the pebble had blown up.

_(No teleporting, I suppose,)_ he mused to himself, and sighed. _(Not yet, at least.)_

He leaned to the side, until his fur brushed up against the cave wall. He hadn't been very fancy in creating his shelter- simply blasted a hole in the side of a mountain- but he hadn't needed to be. Trainers didn't come this far north, where winter lasted nine months out of the year and the only pokemon around were either migratory, or were so emaciated from not enough food that they weren't worth much for battles, to the trainer's minds.

It never seemed to occur to the fools that any creature that could survive under such harsh conditions, and breed, and continue to survive, would be terrifically frightening when cared for. The human's loss and it wasn't something Mewtwo was upset over.

A burst of wind managed to make it past the wall of snow he had mentally shoved across the cave mouth. Mewtwo hissed, and hunched his shoulders. He was not at all fond of the cold. What he wouldn't give for a blanket, or a fire, except the blanket would not be enough to keep him warm, and there was no fuel for any fire to be found.

He glared at the cave opening. It was very tempting to return to a warmer clime- Viridian came to mind, but he immediately thrust it away- and create a more comfortable shelter. He had bigger things then the weather to think about. There was always the matter of Team Rocket, and now, Brenda.

The cave lit with his red aura, as if the fires of hell filled the small space. It was only for a brief moment, but when the light died down, Mewtwo was able to study the damage wrought.

The wall of snow across the cave mouth had melted, letting in the wind. The cave walls, floor, and ceiling were smooth, completely, in a near perfect sphere.

_(No,)_ he decided, getting up and moving to the cave mouth. _(Team Rocket first. I shall deal with _that woman_ later.)_

Indeed, he thought, lifting into the air. He could feel the destructive potential of his energy, even as his aura melted snow in a widening circle about him. Indeed, he had better things to do then think about a psychotic woman who needed a heavy dose of Prozac.

He turned, and flew towards Kanto, adjusting his course so he headed to Lavender Town, the city with the second highest level of Team Rocket activity.

He would deal with Viridian City, and _that woman_, later. Perhaps when he no longer felt quite like simply leveling the metropolis.

**End Notes**

I'm back! And more importantly, CalliopeMused, my most beloved of editors is back. Let's all give her three cheers. Are you with me now? (_crickets chirp_) Wow you guys are friendly. Geez. Anyways, yes, this story is back, and there are a few more chapters to go. If you thought last chapter was tense, oh boy!

And yeah, Mewtwo's lost his temper. I figure that has to happen at least once in a blue moon, right? Now, the only question is getting him to rein that temper back in...

Quick question! Can anyone here figure out how long WoF's timeline so far is? If you get the right answer, you get a cyber-cookie!


	13. Let's Start a Riot

**Friday**

Carmen Davis sized up the house as she approached the front step. There was a thriving thorn bush near the front door, and no decoration besides a battered police cruiser. The garden-variety brick ranch had beige vertical blinds in the front window and an unchipped coat of green paint on the door. After six separate warnings at the station to "stay the hell away from Johnson," she had at least expected a few tumbleweeds.

Davis rapped three times on the wooden door and stepped back. She kept her eyes squarely on the peephole. No cop would open the door to a stranger, but this one might not crack the door open for her.

Brenda put down her glass of beer, and growled low in her throat. Who'd bother her now? Traveling salesmen avoided her house ever since she had tossed one into the thorn bush, and religious folk crossed the street to go past her house.

A quick peek through the peephole got an answer, at least. Brenda jerked open the door, and gave her best death glare, the one that said _'die and start rotting, __**now**_'. "Can I help you?" she growled.

"That's what I'm here to find out," Davis said coolly. "Have you heard the rumors in Lavender? Someone massacred every scientist and executive connected with a Rocket science lab there. All the pokemon were taken away, but the equipment and lab notes were destroyed."

Brenda took a deep breath, and pinched at the bridge of her nose. "No, I haven't heard anything. Go away." She slammed the door closed, and headed back to her living room. She had a beer to finish.

Davis knocked again, three smart raps. She didn't expect an answer, but she hadn't heard the deadbolt slide into place. She let herself into the apartment. "It's been eight days, Johnson. Lavender was just yesterday, and that wasn't the only Team Rocket nest. The world is a better place without Rocket scum, but murder isn't the way to go. Not one of the dead bodies was marked."

"What the fuck- get out of my house!" Brenda sat up so fast black spots danced in front of her eyes. She ignored them. "Get out now! Or I'll rip your arms off and beat you over the head with them!"

"Are you in contact with whoever is calling himself Vahan Smith?" Davis shifted to an alert stance, ready to move when necessary. Half the station had told her just why Johnson was on suspension. Davis's reputation would only suffer from being taken out of commission by a thrown kitchen appliance.

Brenda's response was one long, low snarl. She stood up and started pacing, weaving around the couch, an end table she barely noticed, and stopping next to the kitchen wall. "I haven't talked to that fuckwit since he said I had a knife fetish." She tapped her fist against the wall. "So go away."

"I haven't talked to him since he fucking teleported out of a conference room," Davis said. "Word at the station has it you're the only person in Viridian with a chance of getting through to him. Interested in sending a message before I can get concrete evidence? I know for a fact that Team Rocket is setting up surveillance fast, and scrambling for better security."

Brenda punched the wall. Her fist sunk up to the wrist in drywall and plaster, but she didn't seem to notice. "Fuck," she whispered. "They'll know... Fuck!"

"Would I be correct in guessing a master ball would be very bad news? All my little canaries in Rocket are singing putting the pretty toys in their key bases."

Brenda pulled her fist from the wall, and stared at Davis. "I want you out of my house, _now_," she said. "Right now. Get out, stay out, and don't come back."

"I don't care what your motives are, Johnson, you're the only one with a chance of talking to him. He was spoiling for a fight when I saw him Thursday, and just about did that with my head." Davis gestured to the hole in the wall, and waited until she had eye contact with the furious cop. "If Rocket can produce evidence of the rumored psychic vigilante, then police hit squads with Dark types will be authorized in all cities."

Brenda started pacing again. "It's none of your business," she said. "You're an outsider. What the hell do you know? You're nothing more then a political cunt. He can _handle_ dark types, no problem. He can handle cops." She stopped, and glared at Davis again. "You know _nothing_ about this."

"You think a few nasty names are going to make me go cry in my squad car, bitch?" Davis couldn't help the traces of a smile. Now this was what she'd anticipated. "No one outside this room knows exactly what Smith is doing. Rocket doesn't have details on just where Mewtwo's been bunking up, or they would have come looking for him."

Brenda nearly fell over. "You- how- you- Damn you." She sat down before her knees gave out, and scrubbed at her eyes. "If you weren't a cop, I'd threaten to shoot you."

"There's entire hard drives devoted to whatever happened," Davis said. "I haven't read them. I don't plan to. I just know what they called him, and that Rocket has a good idea what to expect. Smith can take care of himself against the police, sure, but what happens when Rocket's businesses pour money into anti-psychic programs?"

Brenda's expression was bleak. "I can't talk to him. He made it very clear he'd like to kill me. I think the only reason he didn't was because we were arguing in a public area."

"He's too methodical for this to be purely rage. If he's still planning, there's a chance he'll listen to reason," Davis said. She didn't cross her fingers behind her back. This was too serious for superstitions. "If he can find legal ways of getting half that evidence... I'll sit in an office the rest of my goddamned life to show the lawyers how to put the entire damn organization behind bars."

"Davis, I don't know how to contact him. Mewtwo... He was flat out pissed when I saw him last." Brenda rubbed at her forehead. "I'll think of something. Now get out."

"He's a psychic, Johnson, a psychic with a big range." Davis let a touch of sympathy color her voice. She liked Smith, even after that last meeting. "I'll be in the station Thursday to try sorting out what he found for me. If you want a sounding board, fine. If you don't, I'll have enough to keep busy."

Brenda closed her eyes and nodded once. "I could try something tomorrow, but not in the city, not alone." She'd called Mewtwo once, mentally. And like Davis said, he had a big range. It could work. "Besides that, if he does show up and he tries to kill me, I'd like backup."

Davis thumbed the hilt of her gun thoughtfully. "This peashooter wouldn't do much, but he didn't kill me last time. If you want someone to play bait-and-switch as a distraction, I can trick a powerful psychic for thirty seconds on my worst day."

"Tomorrow at noon, then." Brenda stood up, and pointed at the door. "Now go away."

Davis left, but only with an insolent salute. "I'll be stopping in at the station to prove you didn't kill me. Want me to water the plant for you?"

Brenda chucked a lamp at the door.

**Saturday**

Brenda stared out the living room window, and did her best to ignore Sheryl's screeching over the phone. "Yeah," she said, not sure what she was agreeing with. "Green sounds fine." There was a police car driving up the street. Unmarked, but only the police managed that shade of beige. "And avoid the meatballs," she said, narrowing her eyes.

The police car swung into her driveway. Brenda was already moving to hang up the phone and grab her gun when Davis jumped out. "Bye mom. Later."

Brenda shoved her gun into the holster on her belt, and unlocked the front door. She stared at Davis, and sighed. "The door's unlocked. You're passenger."

"I'm early, but so's Smith," Davis said. She nonchalantly took her place in the passenger seat. "Pewter City, main shopping district. There was a pretty little area in the middle with landscaping and a fountain. Turns out Rocket had a base beneath it."

"Oh joy." Brenda locked her front door behind her, and paused. She unlocked it, and called for Rhonwen. "You," she told the houndoom. "Make yourself scarce. I don't know when I'll be back, so..." Rhonwen was already walking away. "I love how everyone listens to me. Really. Makes me feel so important..."

Brenda took her place behind the wheel. "We'll have to go through downtown. They're tearing up fifth Avenue. Again."

"Didn't work last time, but at least it keeps the political folk busy," Davis said. "You can go through the downtown fast?"

"Please." Brenda pulled out of the driveway, and stomped on the gas. "Hold on to your lunch. And turn on the radio."

"Mine's already on, and I didn't have time for lunch today. Sirens?"

"Button covered by duct tape." Brenda was already threading her way through traffic, ignoring the blare of horns in her wake. "Now would be good."

Davis heard her radio over Johnson's siren. "How fast can this thing go?" she asked, reaching to start the cruiser's flashing lights. "Smith is all done landscaping. The instant a Rocket flunky is in danger, all police on site have permission to shoot."

"Wonderful. As for speed-" Brenda punched the gas, once space opened up. Viridian City drivers respected the sirens, at least. "-on a straight away, I can manage two-fifty. On a good day." She risked a look over at Davis. "He can shield," she said.

Davis pressed her lips into a thin line. "My department's seen heavy-hitting psychics before, and Rocket sounded pretty damn confident about their chances. I think they have new technology to use against him."

"He can handle himself," Brenda repeated. Her knuckles were pale on the steering wheel. "When he's not so pissed he's blind, anyways."

"Against the police working with Rocket? Instead of arresting the bastards, we have to protect them from Smith."

"That just sucks. I'd rather shoot their knees out, myself." Brenda slowed down to turn a corner on two wheels. The back of the car fishtailed a little, before she got everything straightened out.

"I don't understand the chatter. Someone in Rocket said they had a master ball," Davis said. "I think that's a code for something else, because what are they going to do with a souped-up pokeball?"

Brenda's grip tightened even further on the steering wheel. "You don't know?" she asked. "That sucks." She eased up on the speed a little. "I don't know. Maybe they're trying to find a way to capture humans?"

"Silph swears the thing will catch any pokemon, any time, in any conditions. Maybe Rocket tweaked it to work for psychics?"

"Maybe." Brenda frowned. "Stupid traffic. If we hit rush hour... I'm going on the sidewalk, I swear..."

"Could try Fifth Avenue. They evacuated all the construction equipment so Smith couldn't play with it, you can't do much to this car's suspension."

Brenda swung the car around another corner, and then stomped on the brake. "Wait, you mean he's _here_? In Viridian?"

"He's still in Pewter, but Viridian's infamous for being the center of Rocket activity."

"Shit, yeah." Brenda's heart started pounding. "Hold on. Hopefully the engine won't blow up." She hit the gas again, working her way over to Fifth Avenue.

Davis had the radio braced against her shoulder. It was easier to focus on the litany of names and codes than to watch telephone poles miss the car by just a foot. "The police are getting in the way, but there haven't been any injuries. Paramedics are evacuating the execs, but some genius is taking all the suits into the special ambulances." Her grin was feral. "Ambulances with bars. We'll get a few high-ranking Rockets out of this mess."

"Good." Brenda braced her left foot against the car floor. There really wasn't anything that could make her car's suspension worse, but Fifth Avenue was apparently trying very hard. The pot holes, and just plain holes, were murder. "I'm going to need a new car."

"You'll need a new partner if we can't get there in ten minutes. When the police are done cherry-picking Team Rocket members warrants are out for, they're calling out brute force."

"Grab the wheel, I'm going to keep my foot on the gas."

"And you can't hold onto the wheel why?" Davis demanded as she grabbed the wheel with her left hand.

"Thinking. Distracted. Mentally yelling. Don't want to hit nothing. Get it?" Brenda scrunched up her nose. She'd managed it once before, and managed to talk to Mewtwo after that. So, no problem. She just had to think, yell what she was thinking, and make sure Mewtwo was the one who got the message.

Screw that, all psychics could get a headache, just so long as Mewtwo came to find out why he had one.

"Just so you know, I plan to never work with you in the field again," Davis said, eyes on the road and with the radio still pressed to her right ear. "They're guessing five minutes before they call in the dark patrols."

_'Mewtwo!_' Brenda 'yelled'. _'You fucking son of a bitch! If you don't get your tail over to Viridian _right now_, I'm going to rip your spleen out and force feed it to you, do you hear me?'_ "I hope he heard that," she muttered. "I'm taking the wheel again."

"Shit, speaking of Viridian," Davis said. She gladly relinquished the wheel. "There's a riot downtown. Pokemon everywhere, a few idiots in Rocket outfits, dozens of trainers."

"Well, that'll get Mewtwo's attention. Downtown?" Brenda swung the wheel, grateful when the car's shaking ended. "Pavement good, roads being worked on bad. Which side of downtown, by the gym or City Hall?"

"The gym. City Hall has too many city employees trying to help, and..." Davis trailed off with a smirk. "It'd be fun, but there would be too many distractions. The gym has more Rocket grunts."

"Right then." Brenda growled at the traffic. "Do you have your gun?"

"You have to ask? I have my gun and my brawl kit." She tapped a black plastic container at her right hip. "Basic supplies for riots with pokemon."

"Whoopee." Brawl kit? She wished she had one. "Be ready. We've got five minutes." She could already hear the chaos. Pokemon screeched, roared, and did what else. A few attacks went into the sky. The whole area already looked like a war zone and they weren't even able to see the actual chaos!

"He's pulling back," Davis said. "Pewter City has all the Rockets they want rounded up, and they're pulling out dark types. If he switches to Viridian, we'd be in place to head him off."

"Let's hope he does that, then." The car swung around a corner, and Brenda slammed on the brakes. For a moment, all she could do was stare. "Looks like Hell," she said.

"Where are you parking this thing?"

"Here. Let's go!" Brenda opened her door, and jumped out, pulling her gun and running to take cover behind a mail box.

"There's no cover here. The entrance of the gym gives cinderblocks at your back facing into the chaos."

"Right. Why the cinderblocks?" Brenda grumbled, moving to skirt the melee of fighting bodies and pokemon attacks. "Was the moron just paranoid, or did he get a discount, or what?"

"They're cheap? Don't look a gift ponyta in the mouth, we--he's gone. Pewter City has no sight of him, time to think again."

"Then he's probably heading here." Brenda hissed. "Trainer down." She ran for the kid. Sure, she didn't like trainers, but letting one die was a bit beyond her.

Brenda managed to look over at her car, just as a charizard's flamethrower hit it. There was a single moment where she would have sworn time held still. Then there was an explosion, and there was nothing left of the car.

"Hey!" she yelled. "That's my car! Fuck it, you buggering moron, I'm gonna kill you!"

"Johnson, ignore the charizard," Davis snapped.

"That's my car though!" Brenda shook her fist at the charizard. "Damn it, that's my car!"

"It was shit anyway, Johnson. Now you have a good reason to get a new one."

"They'll just put a couple bolts in and call it new." Brenda growled, and turned around. "Where'd the trainer go?"

Davis didn't answer. She did kick Johnson's legs out from beneath her as she dropped to the pavement. "No idea, but someone's plant type is about to get fried by the damn charizard. I hate razor leaves."

Brenda snarled, and got back to her feet. "We're out of... here... Mewtwo." She narrowed her eyes at the sudden burst of blue light, not even a foot away. "Hi. As I'm sure you can see, we're a bit busy."

Mewtwo's eyes narrowed as well. He deflected a hyper beam with a quick shield. _(Detective. Lieutenant.)_

"_Smith?_" Davis glared as she stood, as if the entire disaster was his fault. Actually, it probably was. Smith was a pokemon, which explained the teleportation and the-- "Fuck, Smith, could you not tempt Rocket? Every last grunt knows there's a master ball floating around somewhere."

Mewtwo turned his head, and scowled. _(Just what are you talking about?)_ he asked.

Brenda looked up at the sky. "Does anyone think it's weird we're having this talk in the middle of a battlefield?" she asked, not expecting an answer.

"Extremely. I'll complain later," Davis said, eyes still on Smith. Mewtwo. Whatever his name was. "Have you ever heard of master balls, Smith? Silph Company's latest and greatest."

"He's heard of them," Brenda snapped. "We're talking someplace that isn't here."

_(You're not in any position to give orders, Detective,)_ Mewtwo said.

"Davis... Help me out here."

"Let me guess. You're the biggest, baddest psychic that I'm ever going to meet," Davis said lightly. Her eyes didn't leave Mewtwo. "Doesn't matter. I'm not up to tangling with you, but other people are. Someone in Rocket has a master ball, the police have to content ourselves with the canine squads."

Mewtwo was just getting ready to respond when he heard a sharp crack, and felt something hit his shoulder. He had just enough time to look down and see a spreading red stain, and to feel annoyed, before his legs folded under him and he blacked out.

Brenda blinked, and then screeched. "Mewtwo!" She managed to grab the psychic's shoulders, and winced. "They're shooting now?" There were only a few scattered gunshots, but enough to be worrying.

"Rocket," Davis growled. "He dove for cover when he saw the hit. I know his face." She looked over the bullet wound critically and reached for her riot kit. "I don't suppose you know a fast way to get to the hospital? Paramedics ask too many questions."

"We don't have a car!" Brenda frowned. "Melanie. She knows about Mewtwo."

"Who?"

"Doctor. Resident. Able to find her ass with both hands, which is more then most doctors can do."

"You know where she is?"

"More or less. Get a car. And a phone book."

"I have a pet dispatch who won't ask questions. I'll get Smith stable, you get a car and give me a last name."

"Copeland. Melanie Copeland." Brenda cracked her fingers, and looked around. "Does it matter how we get the car? Legality wise, if I buy whoever it is a new one?"

"It's a riot," Davis said, rifling through her kit. "Cars go missing all the time."

"That's what I thought." Brenda ran towards one of the nearby cars, one that had somehow avoided a great deal of damage. The windows were all smashed in, but the tires looked sound, and she was able to open the door easily. It even closed.

Brenda kicked at the plastic cover, breaking it open. She'd always been good at that. Screw screwdrivers, a good boot solved all problems. A few twists with a few wires, and the car started up. "Davis, you ready?" She got out, and ran back to Mewtwo.

"I can't do anything about the bullet, but a little hyper potion won't hurt. Do we want him conscious or not? He's heavy."

"Not. Don't want to even think about him being conscious right now."

"Good point. Is he going to fit in the backseat of that car?"

"It's his shoulder that's hurt," Brenda said. "I think if we bend his legs, he'll be fine."

"You're the expert," she said. "Lift on three?"

Brenda crouched down, and grabbed Mewtwo's shoulder and arm. "On three. One, two," she braced, and pulled. "Three!"

She clenched her teeth, and ignored the random pain in her leg. "Do you want to get in the back and make sure he doesn't fall off the seat?" she asked.

"I can keep his torso from moving too much and call my friend in dispatch. Melanie Copeland's your doctor?"

"Yes. I need to know if we're going to the hospital or her home or what." Brenda helped shift Mewtwo onto the car seat, and relaxed. "I've got his legs."

"I'm on it. Drive nice, please try not to hit any of the rioters. Officially, I'm on vacation and Paul dropped me off at a relative's house."

Brenda snorted, and clipped a Rocket member as she pulled away from the curb. "I make no promises."

"I did ask you to try. Hitting a few idiots is inevitable." She reached to set her radio on the front passenger seat. "I'll call on my cell for details. Nothing on the police channels."

Brenda squinted, and did her best to ignore the lack of windshield. "Definitely buying whoever's the owner a new car. This one sucks almost as bad as my old one."

Davis didn't listen, distracted with her cell phone. She looked up when they were away from the riot. "218 First Avenue."

"Got it." Brenda headed across town. "Wish I had my siren. Damn it."

"No cop will bother giving you a ticket. Even if you had someone brave enough, they're all heading for the downtown."

"True." Brenda bared her teeth, and pressed the gas just a little more. "We're maybe ten minutes away if I break every rule in the book. You going to report me?"

"Report you for what? Speeding, breaking traffic laws, aiding and abetting a fugitive, or hitting two pedestrians?"

"I didn't hit the pedestrians. They jumped out of the way."

"Clipped the one idiot in the Rocket shirt, and the fishtail a minute ago hit someone."

"Did not!" Brenda headed down Third Avenue. "Can I break the city planner's wrists? He sucks. The streets suck. This isn't even a straight line!"

"Tempting, but there are only so many felonies I like to commit in one day."

Brenda grinned. "Davis, later, do you want to join me in getting drunk? I need to celebrate and lament the death of my car."

"I'm finishing this day because I'm going to wake up tomorrow in my own bed and pretend Saturday never happened. If we still tolerate each other then, sure."

"Alright then." Brenda parked the car, right in front of 218 First Avenue. "Time to haul the kitty out of the car."

"Shouldn't we talk to the doctor first?"

"She can't turn us away if we show up with him on her doorstep. Let's go."

"How many times have you met her?"

"Spent a whole week in her care, once."

"I think I understand. Ready?"

"Ready." Brenda braced herself, and growled. "God he's heavy."

"Your partner," Davis said. "Let's go."

Brenda staggered a little as they walked up to the front door. "Yeah," she said, "but I don't feed him. Much."

"He's big enough to feed himself, isn't he? Do we want to put him down, or just kick the door and wait until she opens it?"

"I'll kick the door. Maybe you can press the doorbell with your elbow."

"Not if I plan on holding him."

"Good point." Brenda started kicking the door. "Melanie! Open up!"

Davis heard someone at the door. "Once you're in, I'm going to start making phone calls. The stolen car is going to be found later in some imaginative location, you will have been at home all day, Smith is still on leave worried about his sick grandmother." She smiled pleasantly at the confused-looking woman who had just opened the door. "Dr. Melanie Copeland? Patient for you."

The doctor looked from the unfamiliar cop to Brenda to Mewtwo. "I don't believe I want to ask, but you may as well come in."

"Thanks, Melanie." Brenda grunted. "You're vanishing, Davis?"

"I'll show up next week. Today didn't happen, I'll put in a good word about your squad car. Watch the news for reports about a rogue charizard."

Brenda smirked, but staggered when she was suddenly responsible for holding all of Mewtwo's weight up. "Okay, lying down now." She managed to get the bastard on the ground with a minimum of falling, and grunted. "Melanie, I don't know if the bullet's still in his shoulder, but we couldn't take him anywhere else."

"This is-- this is my house. That is my living room. It's not antiseptic, it's not well-lit, and I have eyebrow tweezers."

"Well it's not like we can take him to a hospital, damn it!"

Melanie only deliberated for a moment. "Fine. No charge for my time, no charge for gauze and all antibiotics, but someone gets to replace the whiskey."

"We'll make Mewtwo pay for it. It's his shoulder."

"Fine. No nurses, no anesthesiologist, and I'm going to ruin my best set of knives." It normally took only six steps to reach her kitchenette from the front door, but there was a very large unconscious pokemon in her path. Between two cabinets, she had a shot glass, a fifth of whiskey, a very sharp knife, gauze, and an antibiotic cream.

Mewtwo opened one eye and growled. _(Do not touch me,)_ he spat.

"Do you want the bullet out?" Melanie asked.

"He wants the bullet out," Brenda said, and pressed down on Mewtwo's forehead. "You shut up, you've caused enough problems."

"Can you knock yourself out, or do I have to figure out a way to manage improvised anesthesia? The usual field method is to get someone drunk, but I doubt I have enough alcohol for that." The alcohol was her antiseptic. It had been a present in anticipation of surviving residency. Perhaps she should read something further in the presence of a non-human police officer bleeding in her front room.

Mewtwo attempted to lift his head again; Brenda shoved at his forehead, again. _(I have been trained to withstand a great deal of pain, doctor, anything-)_

Brenda slammed her fist down on his shoulder- not where the bullet was, she wasn't that mean, but close. "He's not unconscious, but at least he's stopped talking. You do what you do, I'll keep him from thrashing."

"Don't even try being noble with me," Melanie very firmly told her patient. "You are bleeding on my new carpet, and will have the decency to let me fuss about proper procedures." She plucked a pair of eyebrow tweezers from her counter. "I'm doing surgery with a cosmetic tool and Detective Johnson for a nurse. Don't give me any further complications, or I'll be gibbering in the corner and the bastard in charge of residents will win the betting pool."

"So," Brenda said. "What should I do, sit on him? You don't want him to kick you, believe me."

"I don't have anything for local anesthetic, but I haven't had the chance to look too closely at the wound," she said. "Have you seen those movies where the doctor snaps out the name of some object, and the nurse hands it over? That's what we're playing." Roller bandages, gauze, a bandage clip, and a bottle of water. "How are you even awake?" she asked Smith. "I can see the tissue damage from here."

Mewtwo managed to tilt his head, so he could meet Melanie's eyes. _(As I said, I've had training.)_ His mental voice sounded raspy, that wasn't good. _(This is... not as bad as it could be. I only blacked out due to shock, that's all.)_

"Yeah, he hasn't been in a real fight in ages." Brenda frowned. "So... let's do this."

"Alright," Melanie said, sounding nearly as shaken as her patient. She gingerly sat on the floor, within easy reach of the wounded shoulder. "Do you have any known allergies to antibiotics? I'm going to assume that the variety I have on hand will work, because it's shown no toxicity in five different families of species."

_(No allergies. Except- penicillin. Rashes, I'd rather not...)_ He clenched his teeth, and took a deep breath.

"Ampicillin," she said quietly. Melanie very carefully touched the boundary of the wound. "I've read studies that meditation can be just as effective as painkillers for some very invasive dental work. I'll be fast, but I don't want to cause further damage."

"Do you even know _how_ to meditate?" Brenda asked.

Mewtwo's eyes flashed blue, before he nodded. _(Do as you will, doctor.)_

Melanie nodded in reply. "Pour out a shot of the whiskey, please, and keep the tweezers in that until I'm ready for them." She moistened a piece of gauze and brushed away some of the clotting within the tissue. That would take some work, but at least the bullet hadn't penetrated all the way through. Somehow, it had brushed against the clavicle without causing any obvious trauma to the bone--she probably could convince him to come into the hospital for a physical to X-ray that area. The end of the bullet was visible with only minimal probing. "The tweezers, please."

Brenda fumbled the tweezers, but caught them before they hit the floor. Once they were out of her hand and in Melanie's, she picked up the whiskey again. "Is this actually for something, or..."

"Antiseptic," she said shortly, her entire focus on the silver within the red. The tweezers could barely grip the bullet, but she had enough traction to ease the metal out. She let it fall onto the carpet, and squeezed some of the topical antibiotic onto a second piece of gauze. "I don't have enough antibiotic to cover the entire wound, so I'm taking care of the tissue that had prolonged contact with the bullet. The alcohol is for the rest. I didn't need the knife because he has the oddest anatomy I have had the pleasure of working with--extremely dense muscle, very good bones."

"Well, that's nice to know." Brenda set down the whiskey. If it was needed, it'd be asked for. "Hold!" She pounced on Mewtwo's arm. "Okay, go."

Melanie worked carefully, doing her best to think only about the anatomy and the protocols. "The rest will have to be alcohol," she said when she had squeezed every last bit from the tube. "The bottle, please."

Brenda fished for the bottle one handed. "He's starting to twitch... I think he blacked out again." There was no response on the pokemon side of things, anyways. "I'll sit on him if I have to, Melanie."

"Nearly done," she said, pouring alcohol liberally onto a piece of gauze. This step, at least, was faster. "Blacked out again?" There. Every area cleaned, bandage pad in place, no pressure needed for the few trickles of blood. The roller bandage could wait, as she would want a little cooperation from her patient for that.

"Well, directly after being hit he kind of... I thought he was dead." Doctors were trustworthy. "This is doctor-patient confidentiality, got it?"

"This is so far past that it's in another category," Melanie said. "As soon as he's up again, I'll get a bandage around the shoulder. I don't want to move his arm, and he's too heavy to bandage easily." She let out a breath she must have been holding. "What happened?"

"Davis was- do you know Davis? Never mind, doesn't matter- she was tagging along. Mewtwo and I... We're having some personality conflicts. I'm right, he's wrong, and he's got issues about it."

"You thought he was dead?" Melanie prompted. She had just done surgery on a pokemon, and would have to come up with some way to get blood out of her carpet before her mother visited. She decided that she didn't need to understand personal details.

"Riot and he forgot to duck." She really didn't want to think about that part. "Then there was blood, and he wouldn't talk. Or open his eyes."

"Did he wake up on his own the first time?"

"Sort of. I kind of... drove like hell, and his tail fell off the seat. So that's good. Uhm, he half opened his eyes, tried to kick, and went back into la-la land."

"Shock, I'd think," Melanie said. "Nothing vital was hit, and the bullet... I've never seen a wound that narrow for a gunshot." She eyed the flesh around his shoulder. "I have no reference for if he's too pale or not. What would you say?"

"It's _fur_," Brenda pointed out. "It's not going to get any paler... His breathing is a bit shallower, and a touch fast, though."

"The fur isn't, but the hands might be better." She considered standing, and putting everything back in its place, but it sounded like too much effort. Melanie retreated to medicine. "I want to see him as soon as he can maintain an illusion. I can get an X-ray that no one else will see. The fifth floor's ward still uses film, so there won't be digital records. I want to check the clavicle and scapula for any stress damage, as well as the upper part of the rib cage. The tissue damage alone needs looking after, as well. I'll get you a prescription ointment for that by tomorrow. The best variety should be applied to the wound twice a day, and the bandage should be changed."

"I don't understand one word out of five you just said, but I think I get the idea. X-rays good, ointment good, beat him about the head if he wants to be an idiot."

"I'll put it in English later," Melanie said. "Is he still putting himself under, or is he unconscious?"

"I don't think he put himself under," Brenda muttered. "But I can get him awake real quick. And hey, he might be a lightweight." She reached for the whiskey.

"How?" Melanie asked. "Explanation first, please."

"Straight whiskey isn't for virgin drinkers," Brenda said. "Or for anyone who likes their livers. A little bit isn't going to kill him, or drown him."

"His liver could handle a little," Melanie said. "If you want any for yourself, I'll get two glasses." She stood slowly, and gathered up her materials. "Just two. I'm on rounds tonight. This was supposed to be my afternoon off, but duty nearly broke my front door." Melanie knew her front door would be broken, had Johnson not been encumbered with an unconscious Vahan Smith.

"A glass would be nice." Brenda tilted the bottle against Mewtwo's lips. She waited for the splutter, and grinned when he obliged. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty."

"Remarkably little damage, Officer Smith. The instant you can hold an illusion, you're coming to see me at the hospital for an X-ray." Melanie set the second shot glass back on her counter. "I was getting a glass for him, too, but any port in a storm."

"How about we get that bandage on him, and then him onto the couch?" Brenda looked down, and realized she was still holding onto Mewtwo's arm. "Hey. No sleeping."

Mewtwo narrowed his eyes. _(Detective... Explain why I have such a horrible taste in my mouth, please.)_

"Horrible taste? I'll have you know that's very good whiskey." Melanie handed Johnson a glass. "Was, anyway. I think there's one drink left in that, and I've had enough of a day without reporting to the hospital tipsy."

Brenda lifted the glass, and then drank the shot. "Ugh... That'll go straight to my head. You're buying Melanie a new bottle of whiskey, Mewtwo. Now come on, sit up..."

Brenda was more of a hindrance then a help, but Mewtwo ended up mostly vertical.

Melanie stepped in. "Easy, Smith. Two steps back and you're on the couch. All that I need to do is get a roller to keep this in place, but I didn't want to move your arm around."

Mewtwo tried to glare, but couldn't work up the necessary anger. Melanie had dug a bullet from his shoulder, in her living room. _(I prefer Mewtwo when I do not have an illusion,)_ he said. Walking, at least, Brenda was more of a help. Even if her idea consisted of getting her feet tangled with his and tripping him.

"I've had enough to think about without names, but I'll remember that." Melanie stopped when they reached the couch. "Easy, Brenda, let me guide this part." After the last half an hour, she was done with last names. "At the hospital, however, it's back to 'Officer Smith' in corridors. Can you hold your arm out an inch or so away from your side? That'll be enough to work the bandage."

Mewtwo did as asked. His shoulder muscles burned as he lifted his arm, but it was better then being shot. Anything, he decided, was better then being shot.

This part, at least, she could do quickly without risking mistakes. Brace one end gently against the wound, hand the bandage around an arm, and take the clip from the edge of her shirtsleeve. "There," she said. "You'll need to change the gauze over the wound twice a day, I can write you a prescription for the ointment. I'll write it for Brenda, for the scrape on her arm."

"I have a scrape on my arm?" Brenda asked. "Never mind. You, Mewtwo, are on bed rest until the doc here says otherwise. If you don't behave, I'll sic Alison on you and she'll end up dying you blue in your sleep. Got it?"

"I'd say one day full bed rest, one of relaxed activity, but you're not working until I've seen how well you're healing."

Mewtwo just made a tiny sound, and shook his head. _(Don't worry, Doctor. I'll behave.)_

**End Notes**

I've gotten everything but the very last chapter written and edited. Expect the next update sometime within a few days, 'cause I just want to stupid proof it.


	14. Psychiatry

**Saturday**

Brenda growled. "He can be moved, right?"

Melanie pursed her lips. "I do believe so. The bullet was more tissue damage than anything. I think he's exhausted more than anything." Her couch was barely more than a loveseat. It definitely had not been made for someone Mewtwo's height.

"Then I'm moving him now. It's either that, or I'll sleep on the floor."

She winced. "I did plan on having people over tomorrow, and would rather not have to explain all this after my shift. Could you get a ride?"

"I'll call Davis then. Can you tell...? Never mind. Help me up. The floor sucks."

"Tell?" Melanie prompted as she offered a hand.

"Fine. Can you tell if he's slept recently?" Brenda looked over at the slumbering pokemon. "He has insomnia a lot, and, well... He was trained for battle. Pokemon get worse then a bullet wound all the time. And he fainted."

"It's hard enough to tell on people you've been trained on for years," she said. "I would guess he hasn't. If he can't, then I'll prescribe sleeping pills."

"Whatever. Just wondered why he'd faint, is all. Where's your phone?"

"Kitchen counter."

Brenda stalked over, and shoved both hands into her jean pockets. She wasn't going to put a hole in Melanie's wall. "Right, right... What's Davis's number again?"

She finally dialed dispatch and growled a request for 'that fuckwit Davis's' number. Dispatch handed it over without question or comment.

"Please tell me I'm not on riot duty again, Johnson."

"No, we just need a ride. The doctor's sending us off to our place and-" Brenda winced at the growling hiss from the couch. "Mewtwo's awake. And cranky."

_(Get away from me, human!)_

"Shaddap, asshole!" Brenda cleared her throat. "Anyways. Want to give us a lift?"

"Human?" Melanie demanded in the other room. "We've met. While I was patching up Brenda, I might add, and there won't be any need for eye-glowiness. No psychic powers for at least two days."

"A lift?" Davis asked. "Lifting what where and when?"

"Taking me and psycho-boy over to my place. As soon as you can?"

"Same place as before?"

"Yeah. Well, skipping the riot." What time was it? And when was the last time she'd had coffee? Her head was starting to float.

"I'll be there in five. You break my car, you'll need to get two new ones."

"I'm not driving. Not until I've had coffee."

_(Fine, _Melanie_, leave me alone! I can take care of myself perfectly fine!)_

"Not driving my car at all, Johnson."

"Which is why you ended up collapsed from exhaustion in the middle of a riot, of course," Melanie said. "The bullet was the last straw. You've pushed psychic powers too hard without sleeping, which means you need rest."

"_Mewtwo_!" Brenda just about broke the phone when she slammed it down. "You will listen to the fucking doctor or so help me I'll break both your necks!"

_(You be silent!)_

"Do you WANT me to hurt you? 'Cause I can, fuckwit!" Brenda stomped back over to the couch. Melanie needed some support. "Now. Melanie. What do we do about his shoulder, his psychic powers, and his tendency to be a complete and utter moron?"

"Why can't I ever get the meek patients that take my every word as gospel?" she grumbled. "I have an eighteen-hour shift in half an hour. Mewtwo, rest. Full meals, at least eight hours of sleep per night, no psychic powers. If you can't sleep, I will prescribe drugs. Johnson, you are to tattle to me if there's a medical problem. You both can ignore personal drama for at least three days."

"Three days?" Brenda stared at Melanie. "Uhm, right. Three days." She'd give him her bed then. And yell at the delivery service that was a good two weeks late on delivery. It felt like a year ago that it'd been ordered, not a month. "I can do that. Can you?"

Mewtwo hissed again, but nodded.

"Good. If necessary... your mother has already called me, Brenda, I will get her involved." She didn't like ultimatums, but this was a special case.

"Sheryl called? How'd she know to do that?" Brenda looked at Mewtwo's shoulder, the undamaged one. "You know what? I don't care. Don't tell me. I think I'd freak if I knew."

"Professional courtesy, that's all."

"Right. This is the part where I stick my fingers in my ears and start singing." Brenda shook her head. "Davis should be here soon. She's giving us a ride. You got any coffee, Melanie?"

"Not enough to share. Bother your driver."

"Melanie, please?" Great, now she had a headache. And Mewtwo looked almost- amused. Fuck him, of course he'd be amused at her suffering. "Just a cup?"

"Eighteen hours," she said dangerously. "I was sleeping when you brought in your partner, whose physiology I have never studied, with a gunshot wound. Mine."

"Fine. I'll ask Davis to swing through a drive through then." Brenda sat down on the floor again. She had to brace one hand against the couch arm, right in front of Mewtwo's face. If it hadn't been undignified, he'd probably have snapped at her, she thought.

_(I wouldn't. You'd taste bad anyways.)_

"Three days," Melanie reminded the both of them.

"Hey, I'm behaving," Brenda protested. "He's the one that read my mind."

Mewtwo struggled to sit up, and managed to lever himself up with one elbow. _(You were projecting,)_ he pointed out. _(And what makes you think I'm going with you?)_

"The bullet we dug out of your shoulder? Can you even change those bandages with your mind fried?" Brenda scowled.

"No psychic tricks until you're fully rested," Melanie said. "You're going with Brenda, or I'm calling Sheryl."

Mewtwo growled, but nodded. Given the choice between the lunatic human, or the human who dealt with lunatics... Well, he could deal with the lunatic.

"When's Davis going to get here?" Brenda asked.

"Not soon enough?" Melanie suggested under her breath.

"It shouldn't take her too long, right?" Brenda started rubbing at her leg. Damned thing. "Today's been a piece of shit. Right Mewtwo? You get shot, I get to work with the bitch."

_(Somehow, that doesn't sound quite like the same levels of suffering,)_ Mewtwo said.

Melanie had never been so relieved to hear someone bang on her door. "None of my acquaintances would knock that loudly. I think that's your ride."

"Right. Come on Mewtwo. Could you get the door, Melanie?" Brenda grunted as she stood up, and then braced herself as Mewtwo used her to pull himself up. At least getting him to the door was easy. He could walk under his own power, though he was swaying a lot.

Melanie pulled the door open. "They're all yours," she told the cop on her front porch.

"Thanks," Davis replied.

"Mewtwo's in the back. I'm driving." Brenda ignored the disbelieving sound from her partner. Ex-partner. Whatever.

"Driving what? You're not driving my car," Davis said. "It's the passenger seat or your legs."

"Fine. I'll take passenger. But you, my fine friend," Brenda pointed her finger at Mewtwo. "You get the back, so you can stretch out. No sleeping until we get home."

Mewtwo lashed his tail, but nodded. _(Very well.)_ Once he was in the back of the car and as comfortable as possible, he closed his eyes.

"No sleeping!"

_(Meditation.)_

"Davis! Make him stop!"

"Johnson, I'm driving you both back to your place. I'm not going to mediate squabbles."

"But he's going to fall asleep!" Brenda hunched down in the passenger seat. "Can you at least swing through a drive through? I need coffee."

"Can't you get coffee at your own place? Besides playing chauffeur, sitting in the passenger seat in your car, and the entire riot, I've had to explain the entire affair without incriminating Mewtwo."

"How'd you manage that? Never mind, I don't care... I need coffee!" She wasn't whining. Was she? Did it matter?

"Will you shut up and not call me for the rest of the day if I get you coffee?"

"It's a deal."

**Sunday**

Brenda cradled a mug of coffee in her hands. She could behave for three days. Mewtwo could behave for three days. Both statements were facts, easily proven. Heck, when she'd been younger and with less self control, she'd been a perfect little girl for nearly a year. She'd worn pink and everything. So yes, she could behave for three days. And Mewtwo, well, she didn't know his history but she bet it'd required more self control then wearing a pink dress would ever need. So he could behave for three days.

And she was brooding over two simple little statements that would get blown to kibbles and bits the moment he woke up and stumbled out of the bedroom and started talking at her. Yeah, the both of them could behave for three days. The problem was, behaving around each other for three days? Not possible. Not at all.

She was extremely possessive. She knew that. She didn't need Sheryl to point it out. And Mewtwo had issues with people who happened to be extremely possessive. It was a mark against her reasoning skills that it'd taken her three or so months to figure it out.

"I'm such an idiot," Brenda muttered. She reached down and stroked Rhonwen's horns. "I need to fix this." She didn't need a partner. But Mewtwo was an all right guy, for a psychic and a pokemon. Having him as an enemy, being a target for his hate… not fun.

There was only one person who'd been able to fix things this badly screwed up before. Brenda got up and stumbled over to the phone. She'd call Sheryl. Sheryl would tell her what to do.

The phone call took five minutes. Brenda finally hung up, because she couldn't think up good answers. She moved over to the couch and lied down.

She really needed to get a new couch, she decided, right before falling asleep.

**Sunday**

Mewtwo wasn't asleep. Despite his exhaustion, there was only so long he could ignore his shoulder's throbbing. Yes, he was a pokemon and yes, he was used to a great deal of discomfort, if not outright pain, but as he had only recently discovered, that meant nothing compared to a bullet wound. It hurt. It hurt a very great deal, in fact, and he would have willingly taken pain killers to deal with it.

Of course, there were no pain killers available. Melanie had not prescribed any, and he was not going to stoop so low as to ask the Detective for any.

Mewtwo stood up, and looked around the room. There was always the possibility that the Detective kept any medications somewhere in her bedroom. If not, well, looking around would certainly provide him with a distraction or two.

This was the second time he had been in her room, and the first time he hadn't noticed anything other then the blackout curtains on the two windows. They had been duct taped to the wall, he discovered now, making them impossible to open. He made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a sigh, and turned on the lights.

He blinked several times, not out of any disorientation or need to let his eyes adjust, but because whatever he had expected to see, this wasn't it.

The room was filled with _clutter_. He couldn't see any closet door, which explained the clothes piled on top of a desk, and more clothes flung on the floor. Presumably clean and dirty. There was a pile of blankets under the desk, covered in short black hairs. Rhonwen's bed, Mewtwo decided, and then looked down at Brenda's bed.

She had- and for some reason this made him want to smile- Zubatman sheets. He traced one cartoon figure with a finger, and then turned to stare at the _books_ everywhere in the room. There had to be at least twenty piled beside the door, and there were a few others scattered around the room. The nearest two were A History of Orange Island Relations and some generic fantasy book about magic and quests. The Detective read these?

There was a sword hanging on one wall. It was the only half-way normal thing about the Detective's room, he decided.

Mewtwo shook his head and put the books down. Even if he looked for a hundred years, he doubted he'd be able to find anything as small as a pill bottle in all the mess. He would have better luck looking for Advil in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

Reduced to looking for Advil. Just what had he become?

Mewtwo walked out of the Detective's bedroom, just in time for someone to start pounding on the front door. He glanced towards it, then looked over as the Detective sat bolt upright on the couch, and then fell to the ground.

_(Graceful,)_ was his only comment.

"Shut up." The Detective stood up, glared at him, and then walked over to the door. She yanked it open and snarled.

Then she paled, as much as she was able. "Uh. Leon. Sheryl. What are you doing here?"

"You must have lost your connection," Sheryl said. Her smile was blithe, Brenda's first warning. "You were just about to tell Leon and I how we could come help you when your land line lost the signal, right?"

Leon shouldered his way in past his wife and daughter. "Which of you put the hole in the wall?" he asked.

Brenda growled, and stepped back. "Right. Lost the connection," she muttered. "And I did." Her parents were here. Great. Why- oh yeah, she'd called them. Last time she made a decision over cold coffee. "Uh. It wasn't anything important."

"Bren, honey? I'm giving you an out. I won't give you another." Sheryl looked over the damage to the house. "Much better than anticipated. From what I've been hearing, I thought that the couch would be in shreds and splinters."

Brenda glanced over at Mewtwo, who was- damn him- leaning against a wall looking very amused at the situation. No help there, not that she'd expected any. "Why the hell would the couch be broke? Rhonwen doesn't chew on the furniture."

Leon folded his arms, and gave Sheryl and Look. "Hon, why don't you ask Mewtwo how his shoulder's doing. Brenda and I need to talk about riot situations and why it's a bad idea to park her car out in the open."

Brenda winced.

"Riot duty protocol? I'm out. Want to come along, Mewtwo?"

Mewtwo arched one eyebrow, and looked at the Detective. She looked sick. _(I think that might be a good idea,)_ he said._ (I'm not really interested in cop affairs any longer.)_

"But..." Brenda's shoulders slumped. "Be sure to lock the door behind you."

"What about a long drive? A colleague lent me her pass for a forest reserve."

Mewtwo nodded, and walked over to Sheryl. _(That sounds quite nice. Shall we?)_

"I'll come pick you up in time for dinner," Sheryl said. "If you and Brenda are done talking about riot duty, I'll even take you out to dinner."

Leon smiled. "Alright, hon. Have a good time." He kissed Sheryl's cheek, and turned to Brenda. "Sit down, young lady."

Mewtwo hurried through the door, and to the Lance's car. _(I'm not interested in hearing any of it,)_ he said, in case Sheryl was wondering.

"Neither am I," Sheryl said. "Cop talk isn't part of my career path."

_(And it is no longer any business of mine.)_ Mewtwo folded himself into the passenger seat, and curled his tail up onto his lap. He eyed Sheryl, but when she didn't make any start at conversation, neither did he.

**Sunday**

Sheryl parked in a pretty clearing just off the road that wound through the reserve. She really would have to borrow that pass again, when she didn't have a necessary guest. Her career path had nothing to do with riot duty, but had everything to do with exploding (literally, in this case) partnerships.

"Brenda considers you her best friend."

Mewtwo's head whipped around so fast both his necks cracked. _(WHAT?)_ he yelled. _(But she- but- No she doesn't.)_

He took a moment, and then growled. _(She considers me on the same level as Rhonwen- a pet. Not a friend.)_

Sheryl braced a hand against her ear after the first thought. It wouldn't help with the volume, of course, but it was an instinct.

"You don't know her as well as you think, then. She treats you like... family, really, but different. You're her partner."

_(Well, you're obviously not around all the time. Perhaps, occasionally, she will be moved to treat me as a living, breathing, _thinking_ creature, but otherwise? No.)_ Mewtwo growled, and got out of the car. _(What do you want?)_

"To attempt to knock sense through your thick skull, just like Leon's trying with Brenda. You're basing your opinion on what Brenda says, I'd guess. She's possessive, irritable, and bad-tempered. You've known that from the start," Sheryl said. "Something changed. You might not even know what happened, but there was a trigger somewhere."

_(Oh? In the three months I've known her, she hasn't changed at all.)_ His eyes flashed blue, warning the human away.

"Precisely. So why are you playing dominos now?"

_(What?)_ Any anger building inside of him simply drained away, and was replaced by confusion. _(I don't understand.)_

"Brenda hasn't changed," she repeated clearly. "You have."

Mewtwo looked away, and folded his arms. _(I haven't.)_

"You bought her a plant." Perhaps it wasn't the most elegant of arguments, but Sheryl wasn't on the clock. None of this was going to be written up as a case file.

Mewtwo decided that staring at Sheryl wasn't the best argument in the world. _(She ended up in the hospital with three broken ribs and a concussion, not including the rest of her injuries, because I was overconfident and got knocked out. It was either that or a bottle of vodka.)_

"The plant's still alive. Someone must have taken care of it, as her version of plant care was to pour coffee into the poor thing's pot."

_(I did, until two weeks ago. Not even a houseplant will die after only two weeks of neglect.)_

"You took care of the plant, as well as being a damn good cop and finding enough material to dismantle Team Rocket in a suitably public and therefore embarrassing fashion. Would you really have thought of that before you ended up working with my daughter?"

Evidently, she didn't know. Mewtwo decided to enlighten her. _(I killed Giovanni. This past week I've been scouring the country for Rocket bases, destroying them. If any Rockets were caught by the police during those attacks, that was none of my doing.)_

"That's not what I'm talking about. Thursday meetings, the ones that Brenda always complained to me about. 'That bitch' was stealing 'her partner,' but she'd add several more expletives and some creative gerunds."

Mewtwo arched one eyebrow. The Detective complained to Sheryl? He hadn't known that. His eyes darkened. Stealing. _(Of course she was upset. One of her resources was being _stolen_,)_ he spat.

"Resources? She doesn't give a damn if someone borrows her computer or her files or her stapler. She does care about Rhonwen, but she trusts Rhonwen to take care of herself. People get irrational about those we really care about."

_(She has a very strange way of showing she cares.)_ Except she didn't, really. Mewtwo shook his head. _(She hated something that was important to me. Team Rocket- Davis and I were working to _get rid of them,_ completely! And she thought some nothing town was more important then that?)_

"It's not nothing to the people in that town, when one of their own is murdered. Knowing who and why helps with closure. Did you ever explain to Brenda what you and Davis were doing?"

_(She knew very well what we were doing,)_ he snarled. _(She just didn't care. It wasn't a murder, it wasn't a crime she involved herself it. If it wasn't important to her, then how could it be important to anyone else?)_

"Did she know, or do you think she should have known?"

There really was no answer Mewtwo could come up with. He looked away, and considered the trees in front of him. However satisfying it would be to rip them apart, it wouldn't solve the problem. _(Does the distinction really matter?)_

"It's the same question that Leon's asking Bren, albeit with different pronouns, about partnership with you. Does the distinction matter now?"

He clenched his teeth hard enough to get a headache. _(No. The fact remains that she- that- Damn it!)_ He swiped at the air with one paw, and growled, audibly and loudly.

"This is a cold reading, now, and I'll straighten it all out later. You feel that she's treating you as a pet, and that the two of you aren't true partners. She feels that you don't care to remain partners with her, and that you would prefer to work with someone else... like Davis."

_(Perhaps I do,)_ he said, doing his best to ignore everything else.

"If Brenda thinks you would rather work with Davis... why would she bother to explain that you're her partner, and she likes having you around?"

_(She never said anything like that.)_ It was time- past time- for Sheryl to be told everything. _(She said I wasn't good for anything, that I'm an 'obsessive fuck up', that-)_ He couldn't continue. He couldn't reasonably continue without hurting someone. Belonged in the shadows, did he? Damn her.

"When did she say that?" Sheryl asked gently.

_(During our argument. Two weeks ago.)_ When the murderer had been caught. When Davis had yelled at him for hacking.

"During an argument--that's not exactly where you should form your opinions. I've known Bren a long time, Mewtwo. Brenda... well, she thought you were going to leave. If you were going to leave her, it was going to because of her. Not because you were sick of her, not because you found something better, but because she made you angry."

He couldn't hold to his hatred of the Detective. Neither of them had exactly been in the best of moods- she'd been in a fight, he'd been in an argument- and she _cared_ about the dead. He... didn't, or hadn't cared about the dead as much as he'd cared about Team Rocket. _(It wasn't supposed to be like this,)_ he murmured, and then blinked. He hadn't meant to say that.

"No. It wasn't. I've not seen her so happy for years, and then I could barely get her to say two words in a row."

_(I meant for me.)_

"Fine. What was it supposed to be like, for you? You were supposed to be alone, going in blind, until Team Rocket struck back? They would have had every last police officer on their side, by law."

_(I could have dealt with it. Then, when I partnered with Brenda...)_ He shook his head. _(It wasn't supposed to last this long. I was only helping until she was better. That was it.)_

"That's how she feels, now. The partnership ended, she's only there until you're better."

He snorted. _(So what happens next?)_ he asked. _(I can leave, no hard feelings? That's it?)_ He didn't want it to be it. Mew, but he didn't want this to just end.

"You can leave. She'll do her level best to pretend she's not upset at all, and I don't think anyone is going to believe her."

_(Or I could stay.)_ Mewtwo closed his eyes, and very nearly laughed. _(I think I would be bored if I went back to the mountains anyways.)_

"Or you could stay, and the two of us can bring dinner back to Bren's place. She doesn't have enough food in that house to feed four, unless you only eat fruit. "

Mewtwo arched one eyebrow. _(As long as it's never had a face, or will grow a face, it's fine. I'm not that strict a vegetarian. Butter, milk... but no eggs.)_ He made a face.

"No eggs, got it. I have Leon's credit card and a car that better not explode. What's for dinner?"

_(What about... Chinese?)_ Mewtwo tilted his head. _(There's enough dishes that I can avoid meat, and everyone else can be happy.)_

Mewtwo glanced over at Sheryl as he got back into the car. _(So. Any suggestions on how to survive my partnership with Brenda?)_

"Set a few boundaries, as far as space goes. The both of you get territorial, you can afford your own space. Don't be afraid to call her on being too pushy." Sheryl started the car as she thought. "Most of all--ask for a little mediation before we start all this drama again, alright?"

_(Are you volunteering?)_ Mewtwo asked, before tilting his head. _(Wait- are you suggesting I should get an apartment?)_ He should have been upset. At the very least, he shouldn't have been amused. Mewtwo shook his head, and sighed. _(Let's get the Chinese now.)_

"Volunteering for mediation? Always. You and Brenda are much more interesting than whiny kids and their whinier parents."

**End Notes**

Continue on to chaper fifteen for any notes.


	15. Closure

**Monday**

Brenda raked a hand back through her hair. Never mind that her mom was a shrink with all sorts of degrees and years of experience, or that her dad had been a cop since he'd turned twenty-three. Sometimes her parents just couldn't take a hint. By the time she'd chased them off, she was too tired to think, let alone hold up her end of a conversation. Let alone a serious conversation with Mewtwo. So she hadn't, she'd gone to sleep instead.

Parents sucked.

The couch sucked too, now that she thought about it.

"Coffee," she muttered, and rolled off the sadistic torture device with bad springs and two really random throw pillows. "Coffee good."

_(You are an addict.)_

Brenda squinted over in Mewtwo's direction. He was leaning against her bedroom door, looking amused. Bastard. She tried to think up something sarcastic and pithy in response.

"Sure," she muttered, and headed for the kitchen. Whatever would happen next, she wanted coffee. Hot coffee would be best, but she'd take cold if it was there.

_(Are you nervous about something?)_ She could _feel_ him standing just a foot away, probably leaning on the kitchen island now. How he'd gotten there, she wasn't sure, but it was tempting to turn around and punch him.

"You know," she said, turning around and pointing one finger at him, "that's real freaky."

Mewtwo arched one eyebrow. _(What, my voice? There's nothing I can do about that.)_

"No, not your voice, the sneaky thing. Don't you make noise? Go away until I'm awake."

_(That could take some time. Less time if you tell me what you're worried about.)_

Yesterday he'd been ready to kill her. Today- she glanced at the clock, yes it was morning- he was asking if she was worried about something? Just what had Sheryl done, and could she do it to a couple other people too? "I'm not worried about nothing," she muttered.

Mewtwo smirked, and, she was sure, mentally chuckled to himself. _(Double negative,)_ he said. _(Of course, it is five in the morning, so perhaps I'll forgive you.)_

What the hell was a double negative? "Keep me from coffee any longer," Brenda warned, "and I'll kick your ass."

Mewtwo waved one paw, and sat down on one of the bar stools. _(Don't delay on my behalf,)_ he said.

Two mugs of blistering hot coffee later, Brenda felt halfway human and more awake then she really wanted to be. "Alright," she grumbled. "So talk."

_(Did Leon really want to talk to you about riots and proper parking procedures?)_

"No."

_(Well then.)_

"Is that your way of asking for information? Because it makes no sense." Brenda took a sip from her third mug of coffee, and smirked. "Clarification helps conversation."

Mewtwo sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. _(Very well. What did Leon talk to you about?)_

"He yelled at me over the car, told me to stop being an idiot, then we drank coffee."

_(Surely that wasn't all you talked about.)_

"Uh, yeah, it was." Brenda raised both eyebrows. "How about you? What'd you and Sheryl talk about?"

Judging by the way Mewtwo started lashing his tail and narrowed his eyes, it wasn't something he was entirely pleased about. Or maybe he was just figuring out the most annoying way to say whatever it was.

_(Do you really think of me as your best friend?)_

Oh yeah. Annoying phrasing it was. "So?" Brenda clenched her teeth. "What, you object or something?"

Mewtwo's eyes widened, until he looked like someone had just smacked him with a fish. Except if he got smacked with a fish he'd go supernova, she decided. This was just kind of funny. Tempting to say 'just kidding', but… nah.

_(Ah. Well then.)_

"Sure. Did Sheryl tell you that I… y'know. Think of you that way." She wasn't going to say it. Anyone who thought she would was mental.

_(Yes, she did. She also said you were possessive, irritable, and bad tempered.)_

"She forgot 'rude, crude, and an all around bitch', but yeah."

Mewtwo just sighed. _(If I'm your best friend, why do you treat me as you do?)_

"Huh?" Was this what Leon had meant? Damn it, he knew she needed things spelt out. For that matter, Mewtwo should've figured that little fact out too. Personal shit wasn't her area of expertise.

_(Sending me for coffee, ordering me around- you are far kinder, on the whole, to Rhonwen.)_

"Did you just compare yourself to my dog?" Brenda fought against a smile, but the corners of her mouth wouldn't stop twitching.

It was kind of disturbing how a single, glowing blue glance was enough to kill her amusement. Then again, she had seen him at the riot. He'd deflected a fucking hyper beam without even looking.

"Fine, fine. I'm shit with the- y'know. Interpersonal relationship thing if it's not work related."

Mewtwo's expression shifted from annoyed to amused. At least someone was getting some laughs out of this. _(Are you allergic to the word 'friend'?)_

"No, I just don't like saying it. Gives people ideas." She shifted on her seat, and decided to continue. "I'm better off with, y'know, work stuff. And part of work stuff- part of being the senior partner- is bossing the junior partner- you- around."

_(So you admit we're partners.)_

"Could you stop staring at me? Blink, at the very least."

He shook his head. _(You are a piece of work.)_

"Duh."

_(Well.)_ Mewtwo started to stare at her again. Brenda glared back, before turning to look at the fridge.

"What else did Sheryl talk to you about?"

_(No, it's your turn. Your talk with Leon.)_

"Bastard." She took a bracing gulp of her coffee, and then stared down into it. It would probably be easier to get all this out if she didn't have to look at him. Pulling her own fingernails out with pliers would have been easier still, but whatever. "Leon said I have issues with psychics."

There was silence, then, _(Issues?)_ Mewtwo asked, his voice a low growl.

"Yeah, issues, as in I've never met a psychic that wasn't good for anything other then punching in the face." And now came the hard part. "Except you," she muttered.

_(Me.)_

"You're going to rub this in, aren't you?" Well, look at that, she could see her reflection in the coffee. She looked sick. Probably because coffee wasn't a great reflector. "Anyways. I don't know how to deal with you as a psychic because, y'know. Bad experiences. Of course, Leon said I never tried to deal with you as a psychic, so… Yeah."

_(You think I'm good for something other then as a punching bag. I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.)_

Brenda glanced up, and hunched her shoulders. Mewtwo was- blank. Impossible to read. Really annoying. "It's a compliment. Sort of."

_(And that makes it all better.)_

"And you're being really annoying and making it impossible to say stuff."

_(Then I'll be quiet.)_

"Right, I believe that." She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Leon pointed out several of my many faults, said that I had trouble compromising, and that a partnership involves working together with someone, not just giving orders and having them followed."

_(How very astute.)_

"I thought you were shutting up."

_(I was, but I had to agree with Leon. I'm sure you know how it is.)_

"You need a hobby."

_(So do you.)_

"Stop agreeing with Leon, it's freaky." She took another sip of coffee. There. Hard stuff over. "Anyways. Your turn again."

_(Sheryl thinks I should get my own apartment, if we're going to work together.)_ Mewtwo stood up, and arched his back. Brenda could just hear bones cracking as he twisted his shoulders.

"Are we?" she asked. "Working together, I mean."

_(We'd need rules.)_ Mewtwo was back to staring at her. _(Starting with rule number one: I am not an idiot. You will not treat me as one.)_

"If I do, you can yell at me, how's that?" Brenda held out her hand. Mewtwo examined it, and then clasped it with his own.

_(Agreed.)_

"Now, about this apartment," she started. Mewtwo glared at her; she glared right back. "I don't like the idea."

_(You wouldn't.)_

"You're right, I wouldn't. Look, we've already cleaned out the back room, there's furniture on its way, what's the point of getting an apartment?"

Mewtwo looked like he was dealing with something particularly stubborn. Brenda gave him the benefit of the doubt- he was probably trying to find some way to counter her logic, and having difficulties.

_(The point, Detective, is to have my own personal space. One that you don't happen to own. Furthermore, you need the room more then I do, I've seen your bedroom. You don't even have a closet.)_

"I don't need a closet. My system works just fine."

He gave her a look, one that said rather clearly that he doubted her, but wouldn't argue- for now. _(Finally, the furniture _you_ bought is in your taste, not mine.)_

Brenda opened her mouth to say something, she didn't even know what, and then the phone rang. They both turned and gave it a look that should have had it bursting into flame.

"I'll get it," she mumbled.

"Hello?"

"Johnson, Detective Brenda, this is Dispatch. There has been a 1-28 at 1798 King Street, and you are to respond to the scene."

"Whatever, dispatch. My ETA is thirty minutes." She hung up the phone, and looked over at Mewtwo. "So. Want to help figure out who killed the dead guy?"

Mewtwo smirked, and glanced down at his bandaged shoulder, then back up at Brenda. _(What Melanie doesn't know can't hurt her.)_

"That's the spirit. And after we're done, we can go apartment hunting for you. I guess." She'd just have to live with it.

_(Just as long as I can still come here to eat. I can't cook.)_

"Sure, fine." Brenda grabbed her gun up off the end table, and holstered it. She rubbed at her arm, and shrugged. It wasn't that cold out, she didn't think, so she could skip the jacket. "Hey, by the way. I told everyone you were taking care of a sick grandma over in Fushsia. Somehow your grandma died of cancer. I'm sorry."

_(Have I mentioned that you are warped and twisted and- I don't even _have_ a grandmother!)_

"Well, I know that and you know that, but they don't know that and that's a good thing. Come on. We have to go by foot."

Mewtwo sighed, and caught up with Brenda. _(At least it's a nice morning,)_ he said, and pulled on his illusion.

"Yeah," she said, matched her stride with his. "It kinda is, isn't it?"

**End Notes**

Well, my friends, we've come to the end. Not of the Sword and Shield Universe- because it's way too much fun- but to the end of World on Fire. Did I get everything in here that I wanted in here? Mostly- Team Rocket played a smaller part then I'd first expected, but that's because the characters decided to throw in some drama. You can hardly blame them, as their personal issues decided to explode.

Don't you dare assume everything has been worked out and Mewtwo and Brenda will be the best of friends, though! Keep an eye out for Partnership, where they go over the rules of working together, why some people end up dead, and why Brenda finds auto-eroticism so funny.


End file.
